


if tomorrow never comes

by thebluehaze



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adorable Grogu | Baby Yoda, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Gen, Good Parent Din Djarin, Hurt Din Djarin, Hurt/Comfort, Mando'a Language (Star Wars), Temporary Character Death, Time Loop Shenanigans, but a respectable heap of, mayhaps a dash of, rest assured that it is at least good ol’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29280396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebluehaze/pseuds/thebluehaze
Summary: Din sits and he frets. As the time ticks ever forward, he feels the distance between them stretch and warp until it’s a chasm he’s afraid no bridge can cross.They’re separated, and he’s powerless to fix it.—Or, Din is trapped in a time loop in which he loses Grogu day after day after day, never knowing how or when the child will be taken from him each time.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin & Omera
Comments: 41
Kudos: 80





	1. when my time comes around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise i do love these two boys, but the angst potential of this idea just would not leave me alone until i wrote it down. hope you enjoy, folks! 
> 
> mando’a translations at the end, should you need them.
> 
> and the chapter title comes from hozier’s “work song”

The world narrows down to a single focus.

There’s the heat of a couple suns bearing down on him, the desert sand soft but scorching beneath his feet, and the sound of beskar colliding with the enemy’s spear rings in his ears. But Din can feel only the warmth of the child nuzzled in the crook of his arm, hears _protect, protect, protect_ on a loop in his mind. 

He had taken the kid with him into town to restock on supplies, and on their way back to the Razor Crest, they had been ambushed.

Now there’s ration bars, bacta patches, and—yes, a pack of cookies, sue him—littering the ground. Din had dropped what he could to access his weapons, though what he deemed precious cargo remains within his grasp. He’s certain the child is safer in his arms where he can be shielded than on the ground where he could be taken, even if it does mean Din’s fighting with one hand tied.

The humanoid makes another lunge with the spear, and Din raises his vambrace once again as a shield. Beskar triumphs in the duel. The spear merely bounces off the armor, earning a dent in itself for the efforts and leaving no blemish behind on the beskar. 

In the echoing clang that follows, Din draws back his arm to engage the flamethrower. A streak of fire engulfs the enemy and he collapses, burning.

Two more take his place, but in the moment before they arrived, Din was able to draw a weapon of his own. The weight of the amban rifle is true in his hand, and he first uses it to block the punch that comes his way. 

It’s a little clumsy one-handed. The amban rifle swings from the force of the blow without his other hand to stabilize it, but he works with the momentum and soon, it’s barreling straight toward the second humanoid creature. He fires. 

At such close range, the shot is merely a paralyzing electric shock, but it does the job. The second enemy falls. 

Din feels a blaster shot ping against his armor and turns sharply back toward the other creature, sniper rifle still raised. He shoves it forward and up quickly, knocking the blaster straight out of the humanoid’s hands. As it completes its arc, he allows the amban rifle to make contact with the enemy and fires another paralyzing pulse.

Three down.

There’s a commotion behind him, and he spins around to look so fast that a cloud of sand rises around his feet. Two humans. Now that he’s facing them, he realizes that the air around them feels charged. It’s heavy with a pulsating aura of energy. He doesn’t even have to think twice as the pair raise their hands toward him and the child. He instinctively turns so that Grogu is shielded, even if it means the powerful wave of energy hits him in the arm, below the signet-signed pauldron. 

It’s a hard impact, might leave a nasty bruise, but beyond that, Din can’t really tell a difference. It doesn’t seem to have done any real damage, so he sheathes the amban rifle—it is only useful to him in close combat since he has no hand to steady it for aiming—and draws a blaster rifle.

He fires off one shot and hits his target, before he’s forced to move the hand holding the blaster so he can use the vambrace as a shield. Once the flurry of enemy fire cuts off for a reload, he aims the rifle again and takes down the fifth target. 

Din scans the area in front of him as he sheathes the blaster rifle. All clear? Well, not too shabby for a day’s work—

But no, he hears fabric rustle behind him just as a spear comes down onto his armor. He curls forward and to the side to shield Grogu, and he draws the knife from his boot while he’s crouched. 

It’s not his favorite weapon of choice, but it’ll do in a pinch. 

He straightens up with the knife outstretched, and it embeds itself into the enemy’s stomach. There’s a surprised hiss of breath, then a pained wheeze as the ache sets in. He, too, goes down like the others. 

Din sighs—he’d prefer to incapacitate than to kill—but it’s done now. The child is safe. He’s fulfilled his base purpose. 

He runs a gloved hand over Grogu’s baby-fuzzed head, to comfort the child as much as to reassure himself that they’re okay now.

”Quite a show, huh? Did you like your front-row seat?”

A coo answers him, and it sounds neither frightened nor excited. Resigned, perhaps, like he’s numb to the violence. He probably is, Din thinks to himself. If not because of hanging around him all this time, then certainly because of the dark memories that Ahsoka had mentioned from his past. 

”Yeah. Not ideal. Sorry about that, buddy.”

Din kneels to collect their scattered supplies. He places Grogu on the ground beside him so he has another hand free to brush the sand away from the medicine and food. The child waddles over to the pack of cookies and trills excitedly.

”Later, okay? We’ll open them on the ship, promise. I just want to get us out of the open first.”

He goes to collect those as well, but Grogu snatches them up first.

Din holds up his hands in surrender. ”Alright. You can carry them.”

Once the supplies are settled in their bag again, he picks the child back up. “Off we go.”

He’s taken a few steps when he hears the tell-tale crinkle of a bag being opened. He tilts his helmet down to find that the child already has a cookie in his mouth.

”You’re a little womp rat, you know?” He says fondly. 

The child stops chewing. He leans his head back to return Din’s gaze, and his ear twitches questioningly. 

”No, it’s okay. You win. Enjoy them.” Din can’t help but smile at the answering coo of excitement. 

The cookies are gone by the time they get back to the ship.

—

The next morning, Din wakes, for once, of his own accord. 

There’s no blaring alarm from the Razor Crest, pulling him out of a dead sleep to tend to its course. No nightmares jarring him mercifully awake, but leaving him cold and rough around the edges until he can clear his head. Nor even a child stumbling his way over Din to clamber gracelessly onto his chestplate, where he can proceed to babble enthusiastically until Din grumbles to his feet to greet the day. 

When Din rises today, it’s to find that the child is still snuggled into his makeshift hammock. The kid lets out little huffs of air every so often, sleeping soundly. 

Din hums to himself thoughtfully. He can let the kid rest for a little longer, he supposes. Children are meant to get a lot of rest, he’s heard, even if the little womp rat in his care insists on pouncing him awake in the early hours of the morning more often than not. 

He sets off to prepare some breakfast for the two of them, knowing the crazy appetite that the child has, and nearly faceplants when he trips over a toy that he specifically told Grogu to pick up. He has his suspicions that the child _understands_ perfectly fine, but he’s a selective listener. He pushes the toy off to the side with the tip of his boot. No use having the little one trip over it too. 

As he passes by the satellite radio, he turns it on to the lowest volume. It’s been part of his morning routine to listen to the news for years now, partly because there’s always a chance that there might be some discussion as to the whereabouts of a high-suspect bounty and partly because his _buir_ used to do the same. 

“ _—tuning in on this Saturday morning. Two planets collided out in the Reef, so keep an eye out for asteroids if you’re in that area—“_

He takes off his gloves, sets them to the side, and washes his hands before handling the food. The fruit is cut into kid-sized pieces, the ration pack halved, and he’s just retrieved a couple cups when he accidentally lets the cabinet door slam shut behind him.

The _snick_ of it closing ricochets off the Crest’s walls, over-loud in the precious silence of a baby slumbering, and Din sighs. He shouldn’t be so clumsy, he’s— _Ka’ra_ , he’s killed people with these hands. He’s competent. But it’s the domesticity of preparing a meal for two, knowing that they’re truly a clan now, that leaves him flustered. It’s still new, this life. Still shocks him, sometimes, the difference that is etched into every aspect of it, now that he’s tasked with supporting a life instead of snuffing them out.

Behind him, he hears a shuffle as the kid climbs down from the hammock, the padding of tiny feet across the starship’s floor. The footsteps halt, their owner hesitating, at the threshold of the cargo bay.

“Getting a late start, huh, pal?” Din throws over his shoulder as he fills up the glasses. “I had a little extra from our last stop so I’ve got your favorite. Jogan fruit.” He turns around as he says it, to place the glasses on the ground beside the overturned boxes where they eat, he’d say if you were to ask, but really because he wants to catch the kid’s smile when he hears the news.

Instead, there’s a little whimper, low in the back of the kid’s throat, and he grimaces like he can’t stomach the thought.

“No? What do you mean, no? The fruit’s sliced, there’s no going back.”

The child whines again, with feeling, and backs up a step. 

“Hey, hey, I’m kidding.” He switches off the radio, then strides over to Grogu and drops to one knee in front of him. “What’s wrong? You don’t like them anymore? I’ll make a note. It’s done.” 

The child shakes his head a little, ears flopping with the movement. 

“What then?” Din asks, voice soft with concern. He tilts his helmet down, trying to make eye contact with the little one, and continues, teasing, “Have you turned into a picky eater on me? Don’t expect the fit to work on me every time you want things to go your way.” 

He reaches out to scoop Grogu into his arms, but when his thumb brushes against the child’s stomach, the child cries out and flinches violently.

Din’s hands snatch back, and the guilt washes over him. Because the signs were there, weren’t they? He was just too incompetent to see them. The sleeping in. The hesitant footsteps unwilling to come closer, already overwhelmed by the strong smell of the fruit turning his stomach. The lack of an appetite. “Oh, buddy, I’m sorry. Is it your stomach? Are you sick?” 

Grogu blinks up at him pitifully.

“Okay. It’s alright. We’ll get you fixed up.”

Through some sheer force of will, Din appears mostly collected on the outside, but he has no idea what he’s doing. He is but a swan, paddling furiously to stay afloat. Should he—get some broth? Soup? That’s something you do for people who are sick, right? Maybe he can check the child’s temperature, see if he has a fever? 

He brings the back of his hand to Grogu’s forehead, contemplates, switches so that it’s the front of his hand placed against the child. What temperature is his species even supposed to be? He brings the same hand up to his own forehead to compare, like an idiot, and bonks against metal, because he’s wearing a helmet as he has done now for many, many years.

Maybe he’s not so collected on the outside either. 

Grogu tilts his head, watching it all unfold curiously.

”Sorry. Sorry. Let’s just get you some soup, yeah?” He can do soup.

—

After they’ve finished eating, Din watches as the child’s eyes blink slower and longer with every passing minute and finally decides that it’s time they retreat into the sleeping chamber for a nap. Grogu is the one who actually needs a nap, but he won’t settle down until Din crawls into the sleeping chamber too, so that he can have a lap to curl up on. 

Din had no intention of going to sleep, but soon he finds that nearly an hour has passed and he’s jolting awake to the sound of a pained gasp. Forgoing disoriented, he jumps straight to action without even thinking. Some heretofore unknown instinct has him sitting up abruptly, ripping the helmet off his head—it’s all he has, _it’s all he has_ —and shoving it under the child’s chin all in one fluid movement that takes less than a second. Just in time for Grogu to heave into it.

Din sucks in a breath, unhindered by the visor. It’s dark in the sleeping chamber, and the child’s seen his face before anyway. He had done it properly, with the adoption vow solidifying the fact that they were a clan of two, as the Armorer professed, before he ever thought about removing his armor in front of the kid. But it’s still a bit of a shock when Din comes back to himself and realizes what he’s done. He’s never taken off the helmet so—instinctively before, with so little thought, in front of another. It was for the kid, it’s always for the kid, so he can’t regret it. It just leaves him feeling a little hollowed out, to take it off without having consciously chosen to do so. But, he reasons to himself, he probably _would_ in fact have chosen to, had he been a little more awake, so there’s no need to fret about it. There are more important things to tend to.

The kid slumps against him once he’s finished, confirming Din’s thought. He quakes with, heartbreakingly enough, sobs that are restrained and silent. In the haze of the moment and clouded by the guilt he feels for messing up the armor that is so important to Din, the child has unthinkingly reverted back to his old habit of bearing the pain as quietly as he could to survive.

”It’s okay, it’s okay.” Din rubs his back gently and tries not to fall apart with how much it hurts to see the child so distressed, and worse, so set on hiding it. “I’ve got you. You just rest now.”

As he’s carefully brushing his gloved fingers across Grogu’s back in various patterns, over the scene before him is transposed the flash of a memory from his past. He sees himself, a young child, cradled in his birth mother’s lap as she cleans up a bleeding scrape on his knee, speaking all the while in soothing tones and a native tongue. In the memory, his frantic breaths even out under the ministrations of her loving care.

Din closes his eyes, lets himself lean into the memory for a second, to gain the strength he needs to calmly tend to Grogu in the here and now. 

”Come here,” he says to the child, reaching out to gather him into his lap. Din wipes Grogu’s mouth with the back of his cloak, massages his stomach gently to lessen the ache there, and comforts him in a stream of Mando’a. It’s neither of their native tongues, he knows, but it’s become as much a part of him as any tradition from his childhood, and it feels right to share it with the child. His foundling.

The child sniffles wetly, then sighs and burrows deeper into Din’s arms.

Din, for his part, waits until he’s sure the child’s breathing has evened out enough that he’s deeply asleep before he gently places him in his hammock and crawls out of the sleeping chamber to do some maintenance.

He cleans the helmet methodically, used to the monotony of the movements from when he tends to it after a rough job, and grabs a heating pack to place on the child’s stomach. 

Now clad in full armor, he paces around the small perimeter of the cargo hold, collapses onto an overturned box and drops his head into his hands. 

He had been shaken by the tidal wave of parental instincts that snapped him into action, sure, and by seeing his mother again, but what really punches him in the gut and makes his hands tremble is the child’s alarmingly silent breakdown.

Din shudders to imagine the sequence of events that would convince the kid he has to hide any signs of weakness in order to survive. And, though it’s selfish, he mourns the fact that the child doesn’t feel safe enough here with him to let down his guard. 

He can—he’ll be better. That’s all there is to it. It’s what the child deserves.

Din nods to himself. He pats the thigh guards just above his knees and pushes to his feet. He rocks the hammock a little, brushes a gloved hand gently against the child’s cheek.

He can’t wait for the kid to be himself again.

—

Careful what you wish for, though, because you just might jinx it.

When Din checks on Grogu later, it’s to find that his green skin has become tinted with gray and he doesn’t so much as twitch no matter what Din does. 

The panic is imminent. It’s on the horizon and coming in quick, and the only thing keeping it somewhat at bay is the fact that Din’s trembling fingers can at least find a pulse. 

Plan, plan, he needs—what’s the plan here? He hasn’t been to the doctor since he swore the Creed—he’s plenty capable of taking care of himself, and he wouldn’t be able to take off the armor in front of someone else anyway—and his birth parents hardly ever needed to take him either. But he’ll be damned if his pride gets in the way of helping the kid, so doctor it is. 

Din doesn’t know how he manages to pilot and land the ship with how badly his hands are shaking and mind racing. He honestly can’t recall much of the journey beyond the frantic way he keeps hold of the unconscious child in his lap, like that will do anything to tether him to life. 

But they do somehow end up making it to the closest inhabited planet. Din stumbles his way off the ship and through the doors of the medcenter, looking for all the world like he’s on a drunken sin with how unsteady he is.

A nurse crosses his path. He chokes out, “Help,” so brokenly that even the modulator of his helmet doesn’t filter out the emotion behind it. She turns to him, surprised by the sight before her but recovering quickly.

”What seems to be the problem, sir?”

He looks down at the child, back to the nurse. Double-takes, then once more ping-pongs his vision between the two. “I—I don’t know.”

“Alright, sir, I’ve got it. I’ll take it from here.”

Din hesitates. Wherever he goes, the child goes, and it seems only fair that the reverse be true as well. “You’ll—?”

”Take it from here, yes. Don’t worry, he’s in good hands.”

Be that as it may, he comes to his own decision, the prospect of leaving the child all alone snapping him out of his panic enough to put his foot down. “Alright, lead the way.”

She falters. “You misunderstand—“

”I have not,” Din says, though not unkindly. 

The nurse nods, stilted and awkward but, at least, an affirmation. “Very well.” 

She leads them to an empty room and bustles about with her routine duties. “The doctor will be here shortly,” she says, just before she leaves. 

While they’re waiting, Din fiddles with Grogu’s cloak, tucks him in more securely. “You’re giving me quite the scare, ad’ika,” he says softly as he continues to fiddle well past what’s strictly necessary. 

He hears footsteps outside the door, and his hands still on instinct. He tenses at the knock, gives an answering “come in” tightly. 

The doctor exchanges pleasantries, then bustles about in a similar fashion as the nurse. Once he’s finished with his check-up, he addresses Din, “We’re going to keep him overnight, monitor his vitals. He’s got a bad case of the flu. A variant that, if left untreated, could prove to be deadly—“

Din looks up sharply. Kriffing _hell_. 

The doctor catches on to his concern, despite the helm hiding away his face. “No, no, nothing to worry about, we’ve caught it in time. He just needs fluids and rest.” 

Din blows out a breath, but he remains on the offensive. It doesn’t sit well with him how nonchalant this doctor is. This is—it’s life and death they’re talking about here. Of a _child_. 

The doctor continues, “So you’re welcome to check back in with him tomorrow—“

“Excuse me?” What if the child wakes up? He doesn’t talk, he won’t be able to ask questions, and while Din himself can’t exactly understand him either, he can guess. He’s learning. He knows far more about the child’s communication patterns than anyone here. 

”There’s no need for you to stay. And we’re booked solid, we have no bed for you.”

”Neither do I,” Din says, thinking of the tiny storage compartment—that he now has to share with another little soul—acting as his sleeping chamber currently, and of the pilot’s chair that’s served him well many a night. “I adapt.” 

The doctor acquiesces sheepishly and exits.

And so it is that Din is a stalwart fixture in the room as the nurse hooks Grogu up to various machines, as intrusive beeps overtake the peaceful quiet of moments before, and as the child slumbers on. 

Din sits and he frets. As the time ticks ever forward and the child remains unconscious, he feels the distance between them stretch and warp until it’s a chasm he’s afraid no bridge can cross. 

They’re separated, and he’s powerless to fix it.

—

Good thing he doesn’t have to then.

The next morning, Din wakes, for once, of his own accord. 

It’s not too surprising considering the kid had been unconscious when he’d drifted off. And there’s no one else around to get into trouble in the early hours of the morning. 

What does present some concerns is the fact that he can no longer hear any incessant beeping. In its place, he listens to the gentle hum of an overworked engine puttering determinedly on.

He snaps his eyes open.

 _’Lek_ , he’s definitely on the Razor Crest, and he definitely didn’t go to sleep here.

”Grogu?” Din calls hesitantly. He’s perhaps losing his mind, could in fact have lost it already. Was it a dream? It can’t have been, it felt too real, but—what other explanation is there? 

A long green ear peeks out from its quarters, and it’s closely followed by the child’s face, tilted diagonally to peer around the hammock. 

Din nearly hits his head on the low ceiling, he moves so fast. “Are you okay?” he asks, reaching out for the kid. What if _this_ is the dream? He apparently can’t tell the difference, so he needs confirmation. He gently wraps his hand around Grogu’s wrist, thumb pressed against his pulse point. It thumps reassuringly, and Din blows out a breath. That’s as real as anything, he thinks to himself. 

The child trills a question, concerned.

He pats the kid’s wrist a couple times absentmindedly before letting go. “It’s okay, ad’ika. I just—had a bad dream. Or something. Let’s get you some breakfast.”

He gathers Grogu into the crook of one arm and steps into the cargo bay. He takes one step, then another, and suddenly he’s tripping over a toy that he _asked_ the child to pick up. 

Wait.

He himself moved that yesterday. He knows he did.

He kicks it clumsily to the side and races over to the satellite radio. 

“ _—tuning in on this Saturday morning. Two planets collided out in the Reef, so keep an eye out for asteroids if you’re in that area—“_

Din sighs heavily and slams the power button again to shut it off. 

He nods to himself. That’s fine. This is fine. He’s having some serious déjà vu, is all. 

But then he turns to his meager storage of food and finds a piece of fruit waiting innocently, unsliced. _Kriff_. There’s nothing for it. He needs to call for backup.

Din heads into the cockpit to send out a transmitter signal, child tagging along for the ride. He doesn’t have to wait long before the comm is answered. 

”Mando!” Cara’s voice rings through the starship.

“What’s today?” Din asks, figuring he may as well start with the basics.

”You had to call me for that? I’m not a calendar.” 

”Humor me.”

She sighs. ”It’s Saturday.”

There’s a muffled curse from his end, followed by a lengthy silence, during which he experiences an existential panic behind the privacy of his helm.

“What’s up?” Cara says.

“Something’s—happened.”

“O _kay_ , what’s up?”

“The kid was sick, so—“

“He’ll be fine! He’s a tough one.” She says reassuringly.

“The kid _was_ sick—“

“Well, there you go, told you so.” Din can hear the teasing smile she’s sporting in her voice.

“ _So_ ,” he says, “I took him to a doctor last night and they said he’d need to stay overnight. We both did actually. But we’re somehow back on the Crest again this morning, and I have no memory of the interlude.”

“...Have you been drinking?”

“No! No. Listen, this really happened. And not in a dream or a—I don’t know, a hallucination or whatever you’re thinking. It’s like there’s been a reset. The toy, and the radio...and the _fruit_ —” he lists off, surely sounding half-insane to someone who doesn’t know the full story.

She clears her throat, interrupting him. “Okay. I get it. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. What you need to do is get some parenting advice from someone who knows what you’re going through.”

“I’m not a parent.” Din says automatically, though the dismissal tugs painfully at something deep inside him.

“No? Well, it’ll still be helpful to talk to someone who _is_.”

She hangs up on him, and he angrily shuts off the comlink when the resulting static grates on his nerves. 

Cara didn’t have to leave him hanging like that, but he has to admit that it is good advice. It’s also the only idea that he has, which means he’s got to cling to it and hope for the best.

So with a far more gentle touch, he ghosts a hand over one of the child’s fuzzy ears to get his attention. “You up for a trip, kid? You’ll like where we’re headed, I think. We’ve just got to make one stop first.” 

The child coos enthusiastically, and the sound loosens the noose of anxiety that had been growing tighter and tighter around Din’s heart. His tense shoulders relax and he takes in a full breath, swallows past the lump in his throat.

Just last night, Grogu had been lost to a place where Din couldn’t follow, couldn’t control when or if the child would come back to him. He doesn’t know where this second chance came from, but he will appreciate every single minute of it.

They won’t be separated again, not on his watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my man is in for a rude awakening. :D
> 
> the mando’a translations, as promised:  
>  _buir_ \- father  
>  _Ka’ra_ \- stars (according to mandalorian myth, it’s the ruling council of fallen kings)  
>  _ad’ika_ \- little one, son  
>  _‘lek_ \- yeah (shortened version of _elek_ which translates to yes)
> 
> to be continued!!


	2. lay me gently in the cold dark earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve added a few additional tags, please heed in particular the last one. 
> 
> mando’a translations are provided in the end notes, and the chapter title is from hozier’s “work song”
> 
> happy reading!

Din actually remembers their second trip to the medcenter.

The child is once again a reassuring weight on his lap, but this time, Din’s hands are steady on the control stick and his eyes, no longer glazed over in a dissociative state, take in the beauty of the galaxy as it streaks past. 

He needs to know, for his sanity, if the doctor remembers them from yesterday. He has a sinking suspicion what the answer will be, but still he steers the Razor Crest resolutely away from Sorgan to double-check. 

Din’s not entirely certain what the plan is, when he waltzes in. The child is mercifully awake in his arms, and his long ears flop as he moves his head back and forth to take in the new sights. One ear gets smushed against the breastplate armor when he turns his head to peer back at something they’ve already passed, bending it in half, but the child doesn’t seem to mind. 

Din walks a few paces and begins to look around at all the faces passing by, like that will do anything. 

But fate shines down on the two of them—he spots the nurse from yesterday walking in their direction. It’s a stroke of good luck, perhaps, though it feels to Din more like a particularly brutal blow to the stomach, breath suddenly harder to draw in for a moment, since it’s only further confirmation that some of the events of yesterday are somehow coming to pass again. 

He cuts in front of her, sees an exact replica of the surprised look from the day before, and he knows they’re doomed. “Can I help you?” she asks. 

”You don’t—remember us, do you? From last night?” The words come out flat, hardly a question at all, but she shakes her head slowly anyway. 

Din nods. It was a long shot. He knew that. But he still has to swallow thickly before he can choke out a gruff, “Thanks.” 

Yeah. He’s officially lost his mind. He needs to get to Sorgan.

—

Unfortunately, they don’t quite make it there.

Din walks out the door of the medcenter and straight into a trap. 

Two bounty hunters flank the entrance, and they catch him so much by surprise that his reflexes are only good for so much. As he draws his blaster with his free right hand and expertly fires one shot off to the left to take care of the closest threat to the child, he sees too late the glint of a knife out of the corner of his eye. The second hunter grins as he stabs Din’s side, just below the breastplate. 

Things go downhill from there. And really, what kind of _luck_? The child does not deserve this kind of life. This _just_ happened the other day.

Actually. With the shot of adrenaline that floods his body the second the knife goes in, he has a moment of clarity in which he remembers that fight. Specifically the powerful blast of energy that slammed into him. Could that be the cause of his troubles? Some type of reset—a time loop? 

The lucidity vanishes along with the knife. The pain that had been kept at bay by shock crashes into him all at once as the knife is pulled back out, threatening to drag him under. He clenches his jaw hard, until he’s certain that he won’t make a sound. Still, though, all of him feels seconds away from a full-system shutdown. He can’t keep his grip on the blaster, and it slips from his fingers. But then he doubles down. He locks his knees, presses his hand against the wound for all he’s worth, and checks that he’s still got a firm grip on the child. That’s one thing he can’t afford to let go of. 

The bounty hunter looks shocked that he’s still standing, and a flicker of fear flashes behind his eyes at the thought that he’ll have to go up against a Mandalorian now, and an angry one at that. But he’s also an injured Mandalorian. The bounty hunter stands tall, smug. He can take him.

Din, for his part, looks down at his hands, sees one occupied by the child and the other staunching the flow of blood. Something’s got to give. He sighs heavily and removes the hand from his wound so he can fight. 

He staggers forward a step, side throbbing in time to the beating of his heart. He reaches back for his amban rifle, only to come up short. 

He twists around sharply, just in time to meet the weapon head-on as it is swung into his helmet by the other bounty hunter, who has recovered quickly from the blast Din fired. The shot had merely pinged harmlessly off one of the metal buttons on his jacket, the odds of which happening are practically nonexistent, they’re so minuscule. And yet, here they are. 

The force of the blow to his head coupled with the weakness from blood loss proves to be Din’s undoing. He’s better than this, he knows he is. He can handle getting thrown around a little; it’s the nature of his job. But it feels like something majorly important must have gotten nicked by that knife, because he is fading fast. There’s _got_ to be some force working against them here, Din thinks deliriously through the haze of pain. 

He tumbles to the ground, has enough wherewithal despite his brain rattling around inside his head to at least tuck and roll so he doesn’t jar the child, but that’s all he can do. His strength is spent. For a moment, his eyes slip closed against his will.

When he manages to pry them open again, his vision is doubled and black around the edges, but he still sees—and _haar’chak_ , does he wish he couldn’t—one of the bounty hunters pluck the child from the ground, a blinking fob in the hands of the other. And though his ears are ringing, it can’t quite drown out the sound of the child’s terrified squawk. 

_No_ , please no.

Din taps the control for the flamethrower frantically, but they’re out of range. He’s too far away. 

He can’t give up, he can’t fail the child. His head is spinning so much it feels like the world around him is too, but the thought is crystal clear in his mind: Children are the future. _Grogu_ is _his_ future, and that’s the only Way he wants to follow. 

Any attempt to stand right now would be fruitless, but he does manage to lunge for the knife he keeps in his boot. He throws it clumsily at the pair of bounty hunters, aimed at their legs so it doesn’t accidentally hit the child, but they sidestep it easily.

One of them approaches and hovers above him, savoring the moment. Huh. They think he’s out for the count. Not yet.

Not yet. 

Din sluggishly flaps a hand around, locks it around the goon’s ankle, and _tugs_ , to flip him onto his back. But on the way down, the guy’s elbow jams into Din’s side and his breath hitches, then grows labored with the effort it takes to keep from crying out. His vision whites out and his hearing tunnels as he retreats into himself to escape the agony. He hears, faintly, an angry shout and thinks the second hunter must have stepped closer to avenge his friend. The thought is confirmed when the amban rifle slams into his helmet. His head snaps back, colliding hard with the unrelenting beskar, and he knows no more. 

So much for second chances.

—

The next morning, Din wakes, for...once, of his own accord. 

He registers no pain, despite the events of the previous day. Before he even breathes, he’s up and crawling over to the hammock.

The sight of the child blinking himself slowly out of sleep greets him, and Din blows out a breath. “Hey, kid,” he says softly. 

Din scans the child’s face for any signs that he might remember the traumatizing events of the day before, but he seems to be his usual self. Din can’t forget—and wouldn’t allow himself to even if he could—how completely he had failed Grogu, but at least the child doesn’t have to hold onto those feelings of fear and betrayal.

There’s no getting around the fact that they are officially in a time loop, though. And from the pattern of events so far, it—it seems like. _Ka’ra_ , he doesn’t want to even think about it, but it seems like he and the child are about to get separated every which way the universe can throw at them. 

Unless he can break the cycle.

He could try to stop it before it really even begins, but how? 

Switch things up, somehow? Or—if the time loop is so set on separating the two of them, he could do it himself, in the safest possible way that he knows.

He once thought about leaving the child with Omera and the other villagers on Sorgan. He hasn’t thought again about pulling something like that for a long time, both because the child isn’t safe with all the bounties out on him and also because he’s grown to care for the boy, but if it’s what is best for him now? Could he do it? Leave him for good so that the child doesn’t get taken or hurt or—kriff— _killed_ in the time loop’s relentless pursuit toward separation?

Din stares at the child before him, the way his eyes are still slitted at half-mast with drowsiness and how it reveals a certain amount of trust in the armored man before him. The child wouldn’t allow himself to be in such a compromised state of half-awake if he didn’t trust in Din whole-heartedly, in the fact that Din himself equates to safe as well as that Din will protect him from others when he’s down. He raises a gloved finger slowly toward the child, reminiscent of the day they first met, and this time the child takes it in his tiny hand unquestioningly.

It will kill him if it works, but he’ll do it. He can say goodbye to the child to save him.

—

Preparations that morning feel surreal.

He gathers the child into his arms, and his slight form suddenly rivals the weight of the world with how the guilt and grief bear down on Din. He steps over that _damn_ toy in the middle of the room and he leaves it there, unable to imagine the Razor Crest without the messy sprawl of a child. When he gathers food for breakfast, child on a crate behind him, he finds himself glancing back and forth between him and the ration pack. The cuts on the meat are abysmal, but Din can’t find it in himself to care.

The words _I’m sorry_ crash around with all the other things left unsaid, and they threaten to choke him, stuck in his throat like that, but still he cages them in. He doesn’t want to alarm the little one. For all Grogu knows, they’re just taking a fun trip to one of the only planets where they both felt, for a minute, at peace. Din can leave him with that, for a little longer, for as long as he can.

He pushes all the buttons that Grogu loves, once they migrate to the cockpit, and he knows in the depths of his soul that he will think of the child every time he pilots. His hand on the control stick falters, then disappears, and his heart spasms through fond, devastated, and nostalgic at the trill the child gives when the steering privilege is bestowed upon him. They all equate to love, really, those emotions that bloom a swell of warmth in his chest sometimes and spiral a coil of ice through his veins at others.

The ship soars in and out of a loop-de-loop at the request of the child, and Din lets it happen, once and then again. His smile beneath the visor is tinged with a little sadness, but it’s there, and that’s enough.

Soon—too soon, he needs more _time_ —they’re landing on bright green grass. 

_Sorry_ , his hands say as he stands and tucks the child into the crook of his arm, _sorry_ stamp his feet as he may as well be marching to his death with the solemnity of their procession off the ramp, _sorry_ screams his mind when he begins to search for a familiar face in the crowd that has gathered. He hopes Grogu knows what’s left unsaid.

It ends up being Winta that he spots first. She’s running over to the pair of them, hair streaming out behind her. She comes to a stop before them and waves a hand shyly at the child, glances up to the armored man for permission before reaching out and stroking the child’s fuzzy ear. Her face brightens. Din feels something sing inside him for a moment at the thought that at least he’s making one child happy with his decision. And Grogu can be happy here too. He loves this place, and this place will love him back, when Din can’t do it himself. 

Omera follows behind her daughter, at a slower pace and with a crease in her forehead. She too comes to a stop before them and wraps an arm around Winta’s shoulders. 

”Is everything okay?” she asks. The Mandalorian wouldn’t come back here unless it was important. She’s happy to see him, and he’s always welcome here, but he made his decision and she’s concerned to see him go back on it. He keeps his deals, always. 

He shifts, clears his throat. She cannot see his face, but she can see _him_ , and something _is_ wrong. 

He glances down at the child before speaking, and Omera gets the sense that he was going to say something else but changed his mind at the last second. “We’re just here for a visit. Right, kid?”

Grogu coos and claps his hands, glancing around at all the sights before him, the stunningly blue krill stacked in baskets beside the ponds, and the frog hopping around a little ways ahead of them, but his eyes land finally on Winta when he smiles, all sharp baby teeth. 

Din hates himself. He holds the child a little tighter and he hates himself. Because his plan is to sneak out at night once Grogu is sleeping. 

Looks like their goodbye will go unsaid too. 

—

The day is as beautiful as Din remembers from the last time they were here, and he tries to savor it. There’s a darkness threatening to swallow him whole, but the child is light personified and he radiates it outward, sharing it selflessly with those around him. 

Din is currently sitting on the ground, legs crossed, as he watches Winta teach Grogu how to write using a stick and mud. 

He feels the presence of another behind him and he tenses, but then she clears her throat to announce her presence and he knows it’s just Omera. He allows his shoulders to relax, and he nods up at her in greeting. 

To his surprise, she drops into a kneel beside him, then settles into a comfortable position. “You don’t have to—“ he begins, but she levels a look at him and he shuts right up.

”You’re not okay.” she says gently. “Why?” She doesn’t probe. The question is spoken almost like a statement, inviting but not pressuring. Merely a reassurance that he can share if he wants to.

He finds that he does, but it’s not that simple. He turns his gaze away from Omera to glance back at the children playing. He shakes his head a fraction, though he’s sure it’s not as imperceptible as it would be without the helmet. He’s trained himself to be careful with his emotions. His facial expressions might be hidden away, but that’s not the only outward reflection of what he’s feeling. His movements are telling, too, and even more so because the armor catches and amplifies even the tiniest twitch. That’s all people can see of who he is, so it tends to stand out.

He opens his mouth to politely decline Omera’s invitation, but suddenly the words want to escape him and they stumble out strained. “I’m—sorry,” he says brokenly, helmet still turned in Grogu’s direction. He means it for the child, absolutely, but he also regrets that he’s had to drag Omera and her family into this, that they have to deal with the fallout of a mistake that’s his entirely. 

Omera follows his gaze, and it’s like his soul is laid bare before her. “Ah,” she says, realizing, “you plan on leaving him here.” Her tone is smooth.

Though he feels certain there should be heaps of it, he can detect no judgement in her voice, so he nods once. But he can’t bring himself to look at her.

”You care for him,” she begins, and Din doesn’t even try to deny it. He does, he does so much he aches with it. He thinks back to how he had so adamantly denied being a parent to Cara, but how he is content to let this comment slide by, and he thinks they can both be true at the same time. He’s _not_ a parent, doesn’t deserve that title, but he cares for the child regardless. Even knowing the child as his foundling is different. They were both lost, and they found each other when they needed it most, but that’s a temporary thing. One day, the child will be reunited with his kind, people who can train him like he deserves, and he won’t be lost anymore. He won’t be Din’s to find. 

Omera continues. “So you have a reason?” she asks, with that same gentle knock on his walls. He’s never met someone like that, someone who isn’t interested in sledgehammering them down or climbing over them like they’re not even there. She respects him, and she asks permission before entering into the sacred space of his thoughts. 

He tilts his helmet a little to look at her, considering. The truth is too weird, but he can’t lie to her. She’s so sincere with him, and he wants to be genuine in return. 

Din sighs. “We’re caught in a—“ He stops, thinks about the last couple days, and corrects himself. “ _I’m_ caught in a time loop. Where I lose—“ He falters. He sounds like a broken record, skipping words and backtracking, and he hates it, this display of weakness, but it’s hard to—it’s just hard. To _be_ , right now, much less to strive for eloquence. He sucks in a breath and allows himself to close his eyes for a moment since no one can see it anyway, and he tries again. “Where we’re separated from each other. I just thought if I did that myself, _safely_ , it might satisfy whatever force wants us apart, and he won’t have to get hurt.” 

”Oh, it will still hurt,” she says, gaze directed at the children playing. She doesn’t doubt him for a minute; a time loop seems impossible and far-fetched, but he wouldn’t lie. Not about something like this. Not ever, really. Her gaze lingers on the children for a moment before she blinks and sighs, and she returns her eyes to Din’s visor when she speaks next. “But I understand. If you want to do this, you have my word. I’ll take care of him as my own.” 

“I know,” Din answers, almost before she’s even finished speaking, and that much, at least, is easy to say.

The child chooses that moment to toddle his way over to Din. He’s got a stick in his tiny little hands, and it’s waving about wildly—and a little dangerously, too, considering the pointy edges—as he gesticulates his hands to punctuate nonsensical babbles.

“Wow!” Din says quietly, and he’s grateful the child shines so bright because his infectious warmth is the only way Din has the strength to sound enthusiastic right now. “Really?” 

Grogu grins toothily at the acknowledgment. He prattles on as he takes the stick and begins tracing shaky letters into the mud. A wavy line appears, followed by two diagonals, and another attempt at straight. An adorable furrow dances across the child’s forehead as he concentrates on the task at hand, and soon there’s an entire word there. Or, rather, a name. _Mando_ stares back at Din, written in a child’s clumsy hand but rendered all the more touching because of it. Din thinks back to how he had seen the child point a clawed hand in his direction while talking with Winta earlier, back when the stick had just been found, and he finds himself a little choked up.

He swallows thickly. “Buddy, that’s great!” he says. “Aren’t you a fast learner?” The child giggles sweetly, and Din reaches out with his index finger to gently cuff him under the chin. “Good job, kid.” 

The child glows even brighter at the praise, and Din is sucked in too. He smiles, sincere.

Din looks back to the letters in front of him, and the smile slips from his face all at once when the thought strikes him—they don’t know the child’s name. Winta might have taught Grogu five very different shapes, had she known, and Din feels like an idiot. He doesn’t want the child’s name to be lost forever when he leaves, with the child unable to share the information himself. 

“Hey, kid,” he says, and Grogu coos, head tilting. “C’mere.”

He settles the child in his lap and procures a stick of his own. He traces out _Grogu_ in the mud as a reference and pokes the child in the belly gently to associate the two as synonymous in the child’s mind, and then patiently works through each letter individually with the child. 

”See, you’ve got it!” Din praises, in the end, when Mando and Grogu sit side-by-side, wavy and flawed but perfectly as they should be, Din thinks.

It’s a shame it’s only temporary. With the next rain fall or trample of feet, they’ll be erased to reflect reality. 

The child hops down from his lap and runs back to Winta, no doubt to show off his new word. Din heaves in a shaky breath, watching him go, then gathers some rocks and begins carefully crafting a barrier around the child’s writing, framing it like the precious thing that it is and protecting it as best he can. 

Omera watches, pensive. “You should say goodbye, though,” she says, like their previous conversation was never interrupted. Din looks up sharply, and opens his mouth beneath the helm, but she continues. “You owe it to—“

“Him?” Din finishes, angry with himself. He knows that. The child should at least get a proper farewell if he’s going to be abandoned again. But he didn’t realize how much _strength_ it must have taken his parents, that day they hid him away from the siege, to let him go.

“Yes,” she allows. “But also to yourself.”

He sighs. He puts the last rock in place, then slowly looks up at Omera and nods. Maybe there’s also a unique kind of strength _received_ in the goodbye. The way his parents desperately clung to him, his father’s lingering gaze as he closed the doors one final time, perhaps they were looking for bravery, for a purpose, as much as they were comforting him. 

Still. “I don’t know if I _can_ ,” Din says, quiet, like it’s a confession, and his voice breaks on the last word. 

”You can. We find a way to do all manner of things when it must be done, for our children.”

It sounds so similar to an ideal from the Creed that Din finds himself reverently saying, “This is the Way,” in response, and that settles it. 

It’ll be a give-and-take then. He will use all his strength to say goodbye to Grogu, and it’ll be offered back up to him in the knowledge that he’s doing right by the kid. 

—

The time comes. 

When the sun hangs low in the sky, Din knows the inevitable has reached them.

”Alright, bud,” he says as he gathers the child into his arms. Grogu had been in the center of a group of children, beaming from the attention, and he makes a little noise of protest at being interrupted. “I’ve got to go.” 

The child nods and settles down, wrapping his tiny hand around the index finger of the hand that Din is using to cradle him in his arms. Din’s heart seizes. The child doesn’t understand yet that he won’t be coming along this time. 

Winta rises from the group of children and follows them as they approach her mother huddled off to the side, a little ways away from where the Razor Crest waits patiently. Omera told her, then. 

Din comes to a stop in front of Omera and tilts his helmet down to look at the child as he addresses him. ”You’re going to stay here, understand? Omera will take good care of you, I promise.” His voice comes out rough with emotion, and he’s sure the child can probably feel that his hand is trembling, but Din gives him to Omera and she takes him carefully into her embrace. It’s hard to breathe, and he feels like the pressure on his chest surely should have brought him to his knees by now, but still he stands. His hand lingers on the child’s chest for a moment, and then a moment more. 

The child coos, and it’s not a happy sound at all. He’s confused and hurt, and his little ears droop with sadness. He coos again, a question, and Din wants the answer to be yes, to bend the world to his will, but it can’t be done. He shakes his head gently and ghosts a gloved finger along the child’s cheek. 

This is for the best, his brain reminds him. This is what’s best for the child. His heart spasms and calls out _How?_ desperately, but he pushes the emotion down. 

”Grogu—“ he begins, but what do you say when your world’s caving in? He shakes his head to himself and bends a little, so that his face is level with the child’s. He touches their foreheads together gently, for just a moment, presses all of the love and regret and guilt and warmth that he can into the action, and then he straightens back up. A Mandalorian farewell for the foundling that he would’ve been happy to raise according to the Way, had their circumstances allowed it. He rubs one of Grogu’s soft, floppy ears between his fingers and says, “Goodbye, ad’ika.”

When he backs up a step, the child reaches out with grabby hands before Omera can stop him, and Din can’t—he can’t _breathe_ for a second with the grief that overcomes him. He closes his eyes, hates himself for doing it, but continues to keep them closed as he turns around to head back to the Razor Crest.

He only opens them after his back is to the kid, and _coward_ joins the symphony of thoughts swirling in his head, on repeat and cranked up to max volume.

Din’s at the ship, waiting on the ramp to lower, when he hears footsteps approaching him. He turns to see that Omera has deposited the child into Winta’s capable hands, and the pair of children stand a good distance away. Out of hearing range, at least, Din notices. 

Omera looks at him sadly, really looks, her gaze directed exactly where his eyes are, though they’re hidden by the visor. 

”Thank you,” Din says sincerely. It’s not enough for everything she’s done and everything she’s agreeing to do, if this works, but it’s all he has to give. 

She nods once, slow and deep, to acknowledge and accept the gratitude. “Are you okay?” she asks. 

He’s quiet for so long that she’s sure he isn’t going to answer. But then he heaves in a shaky breath and whispers, “No,” while looking off into the distance, in the direction of the children. Without another word, he walks into the Razor Crest and presses the button to close the ramp. 

And if the ship remains grounded for longer than it should reasonably take for Din to head into the cockpit and power it up, like he had to take a minute to brace himself against the wall so he didn’t outright collapse under the soul-crushing sorrow weakening his limbs? Omera won’t hold it against him. 

—

The next morning, Din wakes, for once, of his own accord. 

At first, he can’t tell whether it worked or not. His sleep-addled mind takes a minute to come back online fully, and he’s in no rush to face his first day without the kid anyway. 

But then he notices a distinct lack of the gentle vibration from the starship’s engine, picks up on the beam of light warming his feet, and he sits up quickly. 

That’s different. A hesitant hope blooms in his chest, warring with the dread of never seeing Grogu again. Did it work? 

No, that doesn’t make any sense. He’d be on his ship if it had. And he’s—he looks around at his humble surroundings, the thatched roof of a handmade hut, the personal trinkets that have collected over the years, the homey feeling that speaks to a family’s shared life within these walls—he’s...on Sorgan. 

_Me’ven?_ He races outside and stops the first person he sees. “Today, what’s today?” he asks frantically. 

“Saturday, of course.”

Din raises his eyebrows, though the action is lost to everyone else. The same day as yesterday, but then how would he have ended up here if yesterday technically never happened? He continues, unsure and hesitant, “And—when did I get here?”

The man frowns, concerned. “Why, a few days ago. Are you alright?” 

He nods absentmindedly to reassure the farmer, but inside his mind is racing. A glitch then? Has he drawn the community into the loop with him, and they’ve been given a backstory to accommodate? _Kriff_ , that wasn’t his intention at all. And they don’t even know they’re stuck, cursed to repeat the same day over and over. 

He ducks back into the hut and makes his way over to the crib where Grogu is sleeping peacefully. He’s failed him again. There’s no telling what will happen to them now, and he has no more ideas about how to fix it. 

But. He can’t ignore the tentative swoop of joy taking flight inside him, the unabashed relief that he has the child back. If they’re together, they can face anything. 

Din notices that during the night, one of the child’s ears has been bent back, almost like it’s flipped inside out. He carefully straightens it back for the little one, and Grogu’s eyes open to slits. 

Perhaps his unintentional waking of the child before he was ready is what caused the series of events that would unfold, or maybe the child’s just in a mood. Din hopes it’s not that Grogu subconsciously remembers, somehow, being willingly left behind the day before, that he’s harboring feelings of resentment toward Din because of it. Memories of past iterations of the day haven’t carried over to the child before, but he can’t really be sure, what with the child’s mysterious powers and the glitch that’s already befallen them. 

Whatever it is, the child takes separating them into his own hands this time. 

The villagers had invited both Mandalorian and child to a communal breakfast, and Din had agreed when he’d seen the child’s bright-eyed enthusiasm at the chance to hang out more with the other children. And while Din doesn’t eat with them himself, he recognizes that the invitation is made with good intentions. It’s an offering of fellowship, for many, to eat and drink together. 

So he sits next to the child at the table, and he talks merrily to those around him when addressed.

Once everyone has had their fill, the chairs make a cacophony of scrapes and squeals as they are pushed back from the table. Din makes sure the child is settled in for a bit with Winta and the other children before he grabs his untouched plate of food, pats Grogu’s head gently, and sets off for the hut.

He’s gone for five minutes, tops, but that’s all it takes. 

“Where’s the kid?” he asks, curious but not alarmed, when he returns to find the group of children sans Grogu. The womp rat is a handful on the best of days, so he’s probably just off getting into trouble of the mischievous kind. 

Winta looks up sharply. “He’s not with you?”

Din’s heart skips a beat, but it’s probably fine. A misunderstanding. Nothing more. “No?” he says, but his voice lilts up at the end, turning the response into more of a question.

“No?” she repeats, and she frowns. (Din’s heart skips another beat. It’s _fine_ , though, right?) “He acted like he was going to see you, so I thought...” She wrings her hands together, and now her expression is riddled with guilt and fear. “I am _so_ sorry, he pointed toward where you had gone and then he waddled off in the direction of your hut, and I just assumed—“ 

“Okay,” Din says, his voice coming out a little shrill in his panic, but there’s no bite to it. It’s not her fault. His heart skips three more beats, and it’s got good reason to now, but he tries to keep a level head. “It’s alright. He went that way, you said?” He points back the way he’d come from, and she nods. 

He nods back. She’s still wringing her hands, he notices. He lifts one of his own and it hangs in the air for a second, reaches out toward her, hesitates again, and then pats her shoulder once in reassurance. She looks a little surprised, and, to be honest, he’s a little surprised himself, but her face clears into something that’s marginally less stressed, so he’ll take it. “I’ll find him,” he says, and then he’s walking back toward the hut. Except this time he keeps walking past it.

He hits the button on the side of his helmet to engage the tracking system, and tiny little footprints light up in a path headed for the woods. 

What’s he up to?

He hears a thump behind him and whips around, rifle already drawn with how strung his nerves are right now, but it’s all clear. Just a moment of clumsiness. A basket of krill has spilled out on the floor, and a man stands above them, huffing to himself with frustration. Din lowers his weapon and sighs right alongside him. 

He continues following the child’s trail, keeping his eyes peeled for any signs of him. Trampled leaves, broken twigs. 

He’s walking, with purpose but not terribly fast-paced, when he hears a little sniffle from up ahead, and suddenly he’s walking faster, he’s at a run. 

“Ad’ika?” Din calls out. He rounds a bend and sees the child on the ground, knees drawn up to his chest and back against a tree. Din flips off the tracking system in his helmet so he can look at the child more clearly, and he notices the droopy ears, the furrow marring the little one’s brow, the glassy eyes. 

He drops to a knee before the child, frantic. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He reaches out to cup his cheek gently, but the child flinches back a little. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” 

The child won’t look at him, and—kriffing _hell_. Of course. So it is that he left the child behind yesterday. The child’s feeling all sorts of betrayed by the decision, and Din can’t say that he blames him. He didn’t want to abandon the kid, merely thought it was for the best, but it hadn’t worked, had it? And here’s the consequences of that action before him now, twisting his heart inside his chest. 

He curses to himself. “I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t want to. I promise, never again, okay? It won’t happen again.” 

The child tilts his head a little and sniffles again. He looks off to the side, quick, and his expression flashes with guilt for a split second, and then he lifts his hand toward Din, clenching and unclenching his tiny hand. 

Din blows out a breath, relieved. “That’s right. Promise, buddy, promise,” he says, as he tucks the child safely into the crook of his arm. 

Grogu remains a little—subdued, throughout the day. He keeps glancing back to the woods, ear twitching down before he catches himself and makes a conscious effort to straighten it back out. 

Din keeps an eye on him and does his best to bring back the radiant glimmer he usually has. He brings the child a live frog himself, and lets him swallow it whole, because he seems to like that sort of thing. He doesn’t say a word when the child teethes on the little metal ball from the control stick, simply watches with a fond smile on his face. He dusts the orb discreetly on his cloak when the child decides to share it with him, but still he utters a completely sincere, “Thanks, kid,” because he’s soft for the womp rat. Only for him. Din even bites his tongue when the child sneaks his dessert before his dinner, even though he _knows_ from experience that it’ll ruin his appetite for the healthy stuff. 

But still the child is distant, a faraway, lost look in his eyes as he goes through the motions.

Finally, he whines a little, like he can’t take it anymore, and toddles over to tug on the hem of Din’s pants. 

Din tilts his helmet down so he can look at the child, and once the child sees that he has his attention, he begins to babble a series of clicks and coos that Din is sure are meant to be words, even if he doesn’t quite understand them yet. But he can tell from the child’s motions that he wants him to follow. Din nods, and they set off. 

The child’s ears wilt with every step they take back toward the forest, and he starts to fidget restlessly. He keeps glancing back at Din, then whipping his gaze forward before they can make eye contact, and he can’t seem to decide whether to leave his hands by his side or braided together in front of him. 

Din is about to call whatever this is off, if it’s causing the child so much grief, but then Grogu comes to a halt. He’s staring at something that, from Din’s vantage point, is hidden behind a tree. Din takes another step forward, hears a distressed, mournful coo from the child, and sees—

He sees a fallen Zabrak, laid out on the forest floor with no outward signs of injury, a crushed fob off to the side. No outward—like—like an invisible force had suffocated him from within, and Din’s heart shatters for the kid. Not because he’s scared of him, or worried about what he might become, but because he’s so pure, so good, and he shouldn’t have _had_ to kill in the first place. This is on him. It’s Din’s job to protect the kid, and yet the child must have sensed something that Din had missed. He feels like an idiot—this kid couldn’t hold a grudge for anything, of course he didn’t run away because he’s mad at Din.

He turns at once to the child, intent on fixing this _right now_ —five minutes ago, even. Hell, it shouldn’t have happened at all—but the child won’t look at him.

“Buddy. Hey,” he says softly. “It’s alright. You did good.”

The child shakes his head frantically, and Din sighs. “It doesn’t feel like it, though, does it?” he says gently.

Grogu’s face crumples. 

Din feels the same, and his voice cracks when he says, “I know, I know.” And he does, can still remember the face of the first person he’d killed. It had been an accident, but the second one sure hadn’t, and that’s somehow worse. He’s not sure if this is the first time the child’s had to do something like this, realizes with a lurch that it’s probably not, considering his past, but it _is_ the first time he’s done so after he found safety, a home, maybe even someone that loves him. Perhaps he thought he had left that life behind, but it haunts him still. Din wouldn’t wish this kind of grief on anyone, least of all the little one. He wants more than anything to take it from him, but all he can do is be there. So he takes the child’s tiny hand into his own as he says, “It’ll be okay.”

He finds, when he’s holding the child later that night as the little one jerks himself awake from nightmare after nightmare, that he’s actually grateful this time that the child won’t remember anything come tomorrow. 

—

The next morning, Din wakes, for—well. He wakes of his own accord. 

He relishes every light-hearted giggle and toothy grin that Grogu honors him with while they get ready for the day, thanks the stars that the child can keep his innocence for a little longer. 

Currently, Din is walking around the perimeter of the little village with Omera, while the children entertain themselves at its center. 

”—but when Winta came into the picture, I knew I had to put that life behind me,” she’s saying, in reference to her combat skills. 

Din nods, feels a stab of guilt that he continues to drag Grogu through such a life, but it’s different, right? The child’s being hunted whether Din likes it or not, so he can’t be doing much more damage. “Well,” he says, “you’re very good at it. Could teach me a thing or two.”

At her incredulous look, he smiles to himself. “And I could teach you. It’s about the perspective. I was trained—extensively—in Mandalorian martial arts, and a few others, but you have a different influence. There’s always more to learn, different ways of thinking.” 

She hums thoughtfully and opens her mouth to reply, but whatever she says is drowned out by the ringing echo of a gunshot. For a moment, Din is thrown back to that day, several months ago, when his hopes of a calm, normal life for the child had been shattered by that very same sound.

”The kids—“ he says frantically to Omera as he pushes her behind him, toward the center of town. Everything in him screams at him to go to Grogu, and there’s a sick twist to his stomach that tells him something is very, very wrong, but he is painfully aware that Cara isn’t here this time to save them, so he has to eliminate the threat or it’ll just get worse. He trusts Omera, she’ll see to the children. 

She seems to understand. “Got it. I’ve got them,” she says, already flying in their direction. 

Din doesn’t waste any time either. He heads in the opposite direction, toward the woods, and feels in his bones that it’s too late, he’s too late, it won’t make a damn difference but he’s got to try—

The human doesn’t stand a chance. But he also doesn’t put up much of a fight, and the twisted feeling deep in Din’s gut only grows. 

He’s angry, livid, and the human pays the price. When Din is through with him, his body lies on the floor, still smoking from the blaster shot and with a face every bit as busted as the broken fob beside him.

Then Din is running back into town, the dread swirling through his veins, because he knows—he already knows—

He skids to a stop, takes in the sight before him, the child covered in blood and Winta sobbing into her mother’s shoulder, and it’s confirmation that he didn’t really need because he hasn’t been able to take a full breath since the rifle went off, has felt in his soul that the world wasn’t right—

But he collapses to his knees—feels the impact shudder through him because he just _drops_ , like his strings have been cut all at once—and he presses his palm flat to the child’s chest. 

It—it doesn’t move. The child’s not breathing. Din knew, he knew, but still that fact cuts through to the core of him and it’s worse, it is so much worse to have the proof spread out before him, inescapable. And the truth is this:

Grogu is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry :(
> 
> and here are the mando’a translations for you lovelies:  
>  _haar’chak_ \- damn it  
>  _Ka’ra_ \- stars (according to mandalorian myth, it’s the ruling council of fallen kings)  
>  _ad’ika_ \- little one, son  
>  _me’ven_ \- huh/what? (expression of bewilderment or disbelief)
> 
> until next time!


	3. but no grave can hold my body down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from hozier’s “work song” and mando’a translations can be found in the end notes. 
> 
> the storm is upon us.

The Mandalorian is bowed over the child, not moving at all—hasn’t moved, in fact, for a solid minute. His hand still rests on the child’s unmoving chest, and the orange gloves have started to soak up the blood pouring out of the child. They’re a shade darker than they should be by now. The child’s life force, staining them. Staining him.

Omera glances up from where she’d been frantically checking Winta over for injuries, muttering meaningless reassurances all the while. Her attempts to comfort Winta falter, though, as she takes in the sight of the Mandalorian. The overall wilted look to him. She’s never seen him so small, and yet the grief calls out louder than he’s ever allowed himself to be. He doesn’t say a word, but still she can feel the raw pain from here: in the way he’s bent under the burden of it, slouched precariously where he’s usually so tense, and in the way he’s shocked into stillness, frozen by the horror and unwilling to usher in the beginning of the rest of his life by acknowledging this reality. 

This is no scene for a child, she thinks. The air is thick with a cloying sorrow that chokes, and she has to get Winta _away_ , but. There’s someone who needs her more right now. She presses a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, then another for good measure, and she disentangles herself from Winta’s desperate clinging. “Sweetheart. I need you to be brave for me, okay? Can you do that?”

Winta opens her mouth, presumably to say yes, but a little sob escapes her first and she slaps a hand over her mouth quickly, presses her lips firmly together. She nods. 

Omera’s heart aches, but if Winta can be strong, she’ll have to as well. She nods back, to center them both. “My brave girl,” she says softly. She cradles Winta’s face, makes sure it’s turned away from where the child’s bloodied body lays, then continues. “Go to Adi and tell her what’s happened. She’ll let you stay with her. Don’t leave until I come get you, alright?” 

Winta doesn’t even bother trying to form words this time. She just nods, her tear-stained face glimmering with the movement. Omera grabs her hand as she’s rising from the floor. Trauma is a hell of a drug, a poison that takes and takes until you’re physically depleted just as much as emotionally. It’s hard to remember to do anything in the haze it leaves behind. So she says, “Do me a favor and drink some water,” to Winta, and she gives the hand caught in hers a little squeeze. 

There are, it turns out, many ways to say _I love you_. 

Then Omera takes a fortifying breath as she turns toward the Mandalorian. As she approaches, it’s like he’s in a trance. Where he would normally assume a defensive position if his back was to someone, now he remains as motionless as the chest on which his hand rests. 

She hesitates. She doesn’t want to scare him, but she needs him to know that he’s not alone, so she follows through and places her hand on his shoulder, just between the top of the pauldron and the cowl around his neck. 

And he _breaks_. 

Not, perhaps, in any conventional way, though what is conventional about grief? 

No, the way he shatters is completely him. Quiet, a supernova imploding inward. He simply starts to tremble, as if the touch was all he needed to awaken him from his numbed-out catatonia. The blood-encrusted glove shows signs of it first, a slight twitch, and then the rest of him is quaking too. 

The helmet tilts as its line of sight shifts from the child’s face to his own hand, and he clenches it a couple times as if confused by the tremors. 

Omera, for her part, is morbidly mesmerized by the blood that drips from the glove when he squeezes it, and her stomach clenches right alongside the fist he makes and unmakes. That needs to be—taken care of, somehow. He certainly doesn’t need to carry around the physical proof of the child’s death with him; it’ll haunt him enough as it is. 

She opens her mouth to say his name, but _Mando_ doesn’t seem to fit this moment at all. If there was ever a time when a person deserves to have someone around them that they can trust to know their real name, to know _them_ , it is now. But he doesn’t have that luxury. It’s just them, and so she calls out the only name she can to get his attention, but she softens her voice around it like that will cushion the blow of the anonymity that shrouds them. 

He lifts one shaking hand clumsily, folds down his fingers so that it forms the signal for wait, and she finds herself complying without even thinking. She can give him that. 

Then he speaks for the first time since he pushed her frantically toward town after the blaster fired, but it’s not in any language she recognizes and it’s directed entirely at the child. His helmet remains bowed reverently, and the tone of his voice is serious, formal, though it wavers like the rest of him. Possibly some sort of mourning ritual then? A tribute for the fallen? 

Omera bows her head, too, and blinks several times to clear the tears so set on spilling over from her eyes. This is not her loss to bear. Though it’s an unfathomable cruelty that the child would be ripped from this world so soon, there is no denying that. 

The beautiful flow of words comes to a stop, and he punctuates the last of it by gathering the child gently into his arms and standing to his feet. He cradles the child with the same care he always does, takes a moment to straighten out the tunic and brush a hand over his cheek. Then he unconsciously curls down all but the pointer-finger of the hand holding the child, leaving it open for a tiny hand to grasp it in their own. But it remains untouched. She can see the exact moment when he realizes and is almost glad that she can’t see his face because the anguish is clear enough in the tensing of his shoulders and the hissed intake of breath. The index finger slowly wilts to join the others, defeated. 

Omera clears her throat. “You don’t have to carry him-“ she begins. 

“I do,” he croaks. 

“I can help,” she continues. 

He just tightens his grip on the child, like it’s the only thing holding him together right now, and she lets it go. 

Omera steers them toward his temporary hut, and the Mandalorian follows without a word. He’s always been quiet, but she’s noticed that he narrates what he’s doing to the child more often than not, and the lack of that now leaves a stifling silence in its wake. 

”Here we go,” she mutters when they arrive, taking on the tone she used to use when Winta was young. A gentle murmur, to soothe more than anything else. The words are inconsequential, it’s just about communicating that she’s there. 

“Let’s get the child settled, yeah? You can put him in the crib and I’ll get the medic to—“ Omera swallows thickly and has to look away from his visor before she can continue, “to handle the rest. And we can get you cleaned up a bit here.” 

He remains where he is, and Omera isn’t entirely certain if he even heard her. She taps the back of his hand lightly to get his attention. “Child first,” she says.

That seems to wake him up. He flinches back suddenly and locks his gaze onto hers. He sucks in a breath and says, “Grogu.” 

Omera hums in acknowledgement. ”Is that meant to be...”

”His name.” He nods jerkily, the movement stilted and pained. “Yes.”

She tries for a smile. “It suits him,” she says kindly. “Grogu then. Let’s get Grogu settled.” 

Once the child is laid to rest, as best she can manage right now, anyway, she turns her focus back onto the Mandalorian. She pushes him gently toward a chair by the sink, and he falls into it hard. So carelessly, in fact, that a high-pitched clang accompanies the movement as his vambrace clashes against his thigh guard. 

Omera gathers a washcloth and wets it under the faucet, then lathers it with soap. She comes to a stop in front of the Mandalorian and kneels before him. She gestures to his hands—which still shake, she notices sadly—and asks, “May I?” It’s a bit of a precarious situation, sure, but there’s always time for respect. 

The helmet that had been turned in the direction of the crib now glances back at her. He follows where her hand is pointing and takes in the sight of his bloody gloves, for the first time truly seeing the state of them. His breath hitches, she can hear the strain of it through the modulator of his helmet, and then it wheezes out in a quiet, guttural keen. He nods frantically and tries to rip them off himself, but he’s trembling so much it’s a futile effort. 

“Okay, I’ve got you. Here—“ Omera says as she tugs them off herself. She throws them in the sink to be washed later, then takes one of his pink-tinged hands into her own.

He only protests once throughout the entire process, to warble out “I can do it,” in a small, small voice, but she sets him straight. “You shouldn’t have to,” she says firmly, and that is that. He says no more on the matter.

She scrubs with the washcloth until the red stains have bled over onto it, leaving the Mandalorian’s hands clean once more. 

When she finishes, she considers leaving his hands in her grasp for a moment, to provide comfort like she would do with Winta, but he doesn’t strike her as the type to appreciate people being in his personal space for longer than necessary. She can respect that. So she drops his hands and leans back onto her heels to put some distance between them. 

“Thank you,” says the Mandalorian gruffly. Even wrecked with grief as it is, his voice still conveys that same sincere gratitude that she can always hear from him when he says that phrase. 

She nods but doesn’t respond, because no response could ever be suited to the solemnity of this moment. _No problem_ , _my pleasure_ —they’re insults. She’s helping him because it’s what you do, for a friend in need.

And so the silence hangs. 

Sometimes, she’s found, in moments like this, it’s enough to just be there. Be present with them so they aren’t alone with their thoughts. 

But the Mandalorian’s eyes wander back to the crib and his hands start to fidget. He scrubs his thumb against the palm of his hand, along the pads of his fingers, like he can’t get the feeling of the child’s blood on his hands out of his mind, like he’ll never be rid of it. She watches as the pressure with which he scrubs increases and increases, the movements growing faster and faster with desperation until his skin is red again, but from the friction now. 

“Hey, hey,” Omera says as she cups her hands over his to still the frantic compulsions. She wants to _fix_ it, but stars, what can you possibly say in a situation like this? She knows what she wouldn’t want to hear, if it were her, but that’s the only thing she has to offer, and she’s saying it before she can stop herself. “It’s okay,” she whispers. She regrets it as soon as it’s left her mouth because it’s the worst lie she could’ve told him. This is the farthest thing from okay.

He doesn’t react at all for a moment, but then—

—

Din straightens up quickly, so quick he sways a little. He can’t be sure, no one’s ever died inside the time loop before, so he’s got nothing to go off of here, but those two words— _it’s okay_ —they break through the muddled fog that is his brain right now and cause a flicker of hope to bloom tentatively inside him. 

It _is_ okay, or at least it could be come morning. 

He blinks a few times, fast, to clear his tear-blurred vision. Losing the kid mixed with the tenderness that Omera showed him—he was no match for the both of them. Perhaps not even for either of them separately. It’s been a long time. A long time. Since anyone has treated him with such kindness, looked beyond the hard, invincible shell of beskar to see the man underneath. 

“It’s okay,” Din echoes quietly. He watches Omera’s already-furrowed brow grow ever more creased, plagued as she is with sympathy for him and sorrow of her own. She looks almost worried for him, so he repeats himself a little more firmly. He slips his hands free from Omera’s grasp to gesture vaguely at the world around him. “This isn’t real,” he says, to elaborate further.

To dig himself deeper, more like. 

She frowns and cups the side of his helmet with the palm of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I am so sorry. But it is real. I can’t let you lose yourself in denial.”

Oh, _haran_. What if she’s right? For all he knows, the time loop has been a black hole pulling them relentlessly, inevitably toward the kid’s death this whole time, and it’ll right itself now that it’s satisfied.

But no. He can’t—he can’t afford to think like that. It’s fine. It’ll be fine. 

It is a bit of a problem that nothing sticks for anyone else, though. Omera didn’t remember the kid’s name, doesn’t recall their previous conversation about the time loop. Where she might have readily believed him then, it’ll be a nightmare to try to convince her when she thinks it’s all part of a grief-fueled attempt to bring the kid back. 

“No, no. You don’t understand,” he says to her, firm. He stands to his feet abruptly, causing her to stand with him, and then he begins to pace around the hut as he explains. “I’m stuck. The same day keeps repeating over and over—not the exact same way but some of the details are always there.” He shakes his head and blows out a breath, frustrated. “I don’t understand a lot of it. But the one constant that remains is that I lose the kid.”

He turns back to face her so he can see her reaction. Yeah. She’s still frowning. 

”Mando...” he hears her say, drawn out and hesitant. She wants to believe him, he thinks. She’s just concerned. 

”I know it’s a lot,” Din says, “but this is the truth.”

She bites her lip and starts to wring her hands together, and the action looks so much like Winta the other day that he’s taken aback for a second. 

He looks toward the door of the hut. The other day...

With the man, and the basket of spilled krill.

”I can prove it,” he says, already heading outside. She trails behind him slowly. “What time is it?” Without waiting for an answer, he tilts his head toward the sky to gauge the sun’s position, relevant to where he remembers it being the other day. It’s gotta be close. Looking over toward the lake, he sees the man placing one last fish to his towering pile. It heaps over the top of the basket precariously. 

Din whips back around to her. “Alright. He’s going to drop that.” 

Omera comes to stand beside him, and together they watch the man push himself to his feet. He grabs the basket from the ground, but the movement is too fast for such a full bounty. A few krill slip from the top of the stack. They’re in the air, on their journey to smack against the dirt, when he tries desperately to save them. An unconscious effort, a knee-jerk reaction. He lets go of the basket with one hand and reaches forward, but in doing so, gravity tugs on the unsupported side of the basket and suddenly he can’t keep his grasp on the other end either. It clatters to the ground with a thump, and he stares at it forlornly for a second, unmoving. Then he huffs out a world-weary sigh. 

Din turns his helmet so he can look at Omera, and he finds that her eyes look glassy. 

She takes in a shuddering breath. “He dies _every day?_ ” she whispers, horrified, still staring straight ahead. 

“ _No_. No,” he rushes to clarify. “We’re separated each day, but the method is different. It’s not always like this. He’s never—“ Din shifts his weight back and forth between his feet, like he’s preparing for battle, and his thumb starts scrubbing furiously at the palm of his hand, but he still can’t make himself say it. He switches tactics, “No death.”

Omera nods, and her shoulders lose some of their tension as she blows out a breath. She finally turns to look at him. “I believe you. What do we need to do?” 

—

He had told her that they should do everything exactly as they would normally. Nothing he’s tried has been successful in reversing the effects of the time loop, but it would be just his luck to accidentally stumble upon the cure on a day when the separation is altogether too permanent should they return to normal. 

Pretty much first thing after he convinces Omera that the kid would be okay, and that he is fine himself, she disappears to check on Winta, and he feels that it’s time he confronted the issue of his gloves. It’s unfamiliar and wrong to have the wind dance across his skin, to be able to feel the textures of the objects around him, when what he’s used to is a world filtered through leather and beskar. 

He’s never really had a problem cleaning up after a rough job. For him, it’s the complete opposite. It’s healing. A time where he can purge all the close calls and the kills from his conscience. But as the water tints red with the blood of someone he cares about, he finds that it’s quite a different story. Far from ridding himself of the memories, or at least coming to accept them, he can’t get _away_ from them. He wasn’t even there, when the kid got hit, but that’s the thing. His mind has nothing tangible from the event, so it’s free to conjure up worst-case scenarios like his life depends on it. Was it quick? Or did the child suffer in a prolonged, drawn-out affair, wracked with pain? Did he have time to recognize what was happening? 

Was he scared?

Din’s hands spaz at the thought, causing a spray of water to hit his chest armor. He jumps a little, then angrily slams his hand onto the faucet to shut it off.

Good enough. The gloves look fine. 

All day, he doesn’t let anyone do anything with the child because he’s terrified that burying him will be acquiescing to whatever force wants them apart, and that the child won’t come back to him tomorrow. 

...Today. 

Kriff. Tomorrow’s today.

So he leaves him in the crib and pretends he’s only sleeping, because that’s how he hopes it will be in the next iteration of time. 

When nighttime comes, he tosses and turns so much he genuinely fears that he might not be able to go to sleep, and what if staying up all night, even by accident, undoes the loop?

He considers getting a sleeppack to knock himself out, just to be sure. He nearly goes through with it too, and only stops when he realizes his supply is out.

It’s a vicious cycle. He stresses and tosses and turns and stresses some more, until finally he’s worn himself down enough to drop into a fitful sleep. 

—

The kid does come back to him, that next morning, and the relief cuts to the core of him. He snatches him up then and there, says goodbye to Omera and Winta, and high-tails it out of Sorgan to try to throw the time loop off its game. 

He’ll outrun it, or something. There’s about as much sense in the idea as in a bloggin, but it’s worth a shot. All he knows is that he can’t go through another loss like yesterday’s.

And so Din pilots the Razor Crest resolutely forward, child in his lap. He had stooped down to place him in his designated seat, but the child had made little grabby hands at him and he didn’t have the heart to say no. 

Besides, it’s a nice comfort to have him around since Din’s thoughts are currently a whirlwind of chaos and panic:

What’s the farthest safe planet they can get to in a day? It can’t be one with too many people because he wants to keep a low profile for the kid. But he needs to be able to hide out if things escalate...as has been wont to happen recently. And he should really assess what’s been going wrong so he can be better in the future, he thinks to himself. 

It takes only a minute to come up with a constant there, which is his failure. _Ka’ra_ , he can’t even keep the kid safe for a _day_. What use is he—

 _Clink_. A soft, delicate clatter of something small hitting the floor of the Crest knocks him out of his thoughts. He looks down to see that the child has dropped his favorite toy, and he’s staring up at Din sadly.

“I got it, kid,” he says as he reaches down for the tiny sphere. Grogu coos his gratitude and raises his hands, keeping them open to be able to grasp the toy. As he places it in the kid’s hands, Din admonishes gently, “Be careful.”

He watches as the child nods good-naturedly, ears flopping and smile wide. 

All Din wants is to keep that joy intact. The child deserves a good life. Preferably a life that he’ll actually remember, not whatever is going on here. And what’s going on here, he thinks bitterly, is a whole lot of stress for the child. Sick, kidnapped, innocence stolen...dead. What’s next? 

What _is_ next? 

Din’s heart beats too fast, and he huffs in a breath, finding it harder to draw in for a moment. 

_Clink_. His hand twitches minutely on the control stick, and he hears an accompanying scrape as the object rolls under his chair. 

He sighs fondly. “We’re feeling clumsy today, huh?” he says as he reaches down again, with a bit more effort involved this time to retrieve the sphere from where it rolled. The child remains unmoved on his lap, perhaps with an ear smushed against armor here and there, but no worse for the wear. He claps when Din straightens back up victorious, ball clutched between thumb and forefinger. 

Din returns it to the child, and he finds that he’s not even frustrated with him. His little hands are so tiny that the toy barely fits in his grasp anyway. 

He’s _so_ small, and he felt even frailer when Din was carrying his lifeless body back to the hut. The kid is hardly ever so still. He’s attentive, always turning his head this way and that to take in his surroundings, and he’s active too, swaying his legs over the edge of the crates where they eat or otherwise trying to grab everything that comes into view. But he did none of that and it was unnerving. Just further proof that he was really gone—for a minute there. For too long. 

_Clink_.

He looks down and sees that damn ball, sitting on the floor. The child in his lap has his hands braided together innocently, and if he could whistle, he’d probably be doing that too while he looked pointedly away from Din’s visor. 

What is going _on_ today? Din can be as clumsy as the next person, but this is—

Oh. _Oh_. 

The sound always comes at the crescendo of his dark thoughts, to pull him away. A distraction in the best way the child can. 

The kid is worried about him.

Din pats his back gently. “Message received,” he says as he stoops for the ball again, hopefully for the last time. He’s not entirely certain that it’s possible to stop his thoughts before they spiral out of control, but he’ll find a way for the kid. “We’re good now.”

The child tilts his head and squints his eyes a little, like he’s weighing Din’s soul to see if he’s being honest. He coos and reaches out for the toy, and Din thinks he must have passed the test.

Once Grogu has returned his focus once more to his little sphere, Din whispers a quiet, “Thanks, kid.” Like a prayer.

Din thought he was doing his best to look out for the child this whole time, but maybe it’s a bit more reciprocal than that. 

They can be good for each other.

—

His plan to outrun the time loop doesn’t quite pan out. 

He hears that ominous whine in the air, and then a fleet of TIE fighters is on them, blinking out of hyperdrive as if conjured from thin air. They materialize already firing off shots, like they’ve kriffing glued their missile launcher in the on position permanently. 

Maybe they have. It’s the only way those pieces of junk would ever have half a chance at winning a battle alone.

Together, as a fleet, is a different story, but Din didn’t get to where he is today without learning how to put up a fight. 

He cuts the engines and tilts the dual control sticks back at the same time, so that they plummet quickly out of the range of enemy fire and can offer some surprise shots of their own. Din powers the engines back on just as three TIEs explode. When they drift from the impact, they slam into another two. 

Progress. 

But the remains of the fleet are tuned on him like they’re a swarm of bees and he’s the only flower left in the galaxy. 

He’s quite surrounded. 

In the millisecond that it takes him to assess his options, one of the never-ending stream of blasts from the TIE fighters collides into the side of his right engine, and both Mandalorian and child jerk a little with the movement. It’s a flawed shot, though, a little off-kilter. The engine malfunctions momentarily, and the ship rocks sideways, but then it putters back on. 

That’s alright then. Din has a plan anyway.

They may have above and around him covered, but there’s an opening below. This time the dual control sticks are thrust forward as much as they can go, and the starship responds in kind. It cuts down and around, making a loop-de-loop along the outside rim of the cluster of TIE fighters, firing all the way.

He leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, coming to a stop above the fleet of ships. 

The faulty engine chooses that moment to shut itself off for a nap, and the Razor Crest tilts downward with its loss. They careen straight into a TIE fighter before Din can even think about trying to change their trajectory. 

Sparks fly. The flimsy wing of the TIE fighter snaps in two, and the starship suffers a few scrapes to her hull. 

The engine springs back to life, bright and unapologetic, like it never turned off in the first place. Din sighs and straightens the Razor Crest back out, then resumes his target practice with the TIE fighters. 

He finishes off the ones near him and soars back and forth to plow down some others, too. Unbeknownst to him, a lone TIE fighter sneaks around the back and sets up camp on his tail. Din only becomes aware of it when he hears a faint beeping that grows faster and louder with every passing second. 

No. No no.

He jolts them forward, but it’s too little, too late. The TIE fighter detonates, and it’s close enough to take out the Razor Crest’s good engine with it. 

That’s not ideal. That’s considerably more of a problem, for sure. 

Din desperately lifts up on the controls when they inevitably drop a few feet, and the engine that’s currently spazzing its way through life, less than half-alive, catches them clumsily. 

The debris from the explosion creates a chain of loss, at least, as the TIE fighters are pushed into one another in a series of hard collisions. 

Din took as many as he could down with him, but they’ve got to get out of there. He takes advantage of the distraction and expertly weaves in and out of the chaos, flying fast toward civilization so he can get some repairs done. 

In the end, they’re forced to crash land on the closest planet. 

And it is a _crash_ landing. 

One engine knocked out entirely, the second spluttering every other minute. It reminds Din of a Life Day tree his birth parents bought one year. They usually had a real tree, but money was tight and they got a fake one. Just the once, and they swore they never would again because it was so cheap that the lights wouldn’t stay on. They’d flash on and off. And off and on until finally his mother switched them off permanently to escape the disco hell. He and his father made it a running joke to plug it back in sometimes when she would go into town, but always randomly so it was never expected. They’d be sitting in the room innocently, book in hand, when she returned. He can’t remember, anymore, his father’s handwriting or his mother’s favorite style of dance, but he can still recall clearly how she’d throw back her head and laugh at the sight of those faulty lights, and a genuine, infectious warmth would fill the room. The tree that had been a disappointment from the start soon morphed into a beacon of hope during that season of life when they didn’t have the resources for much else. 

But the flickering is not a good omen this time. To have the one functional engine of his ship dying and starting intermittently is a recipe for disaster. When it shuts off for good, they’re still a few hundred feet off the ground.

And they _plummet_.

The child raises his hands in the air and coos like it’s a fun game, not quite catching the gravity of the situation. Din understands, though. He sits frozen for a second to see if it’ll come back on like it usually does, but when it’s clear that it has given up entirely on performing its intended job, he shoots out of the seat, Grogu clutched in his arms. 

He stumbles his way over to the child’s car seat, clinging to any surface that’s attached to the wall to get back there. He can’t think about anything else except for the desperate need to buckle the kid in, and it genuinely does not occur to him that it’s a huge risk to his own well-being to walk around in a free-falling starship. He just cradles the child in one hand and braces himself with the other and _lunges_ for the back. He knows he can make it. He has to. The kid will be safe, at least, from getting too jostled by the impact. He has just enough time to secure the straps around Grogu’s body and he’s grabbing the back of his chair to lift himself from where he’d been crouched when they slam into the ground. 

_Please_ , he thinks desperately as he goes flying into the doors of the cockpit. _Let it be enough._

And he’s not referring to himself.

Only the child.

Someone must hear his plea, but they’ve got the selective hearing that the kid’s so fond of because when he comes to, it’s to find that the child is slumped against the back of his car seat, unmoving. Din just about passes out again, he moves so fast in the kid’s direction. Once Din gets closer, though, he can hear the soft little puffs of air as Grogu breathes. Just as beskar had been his savior, the woven web of the seatbelt had been the child’s. He’s just unconscious.

And yet, Din knows in the depths of his soul that he’ll remain so for the rest of the day.

Today’s time is up.

—

After that, he doesn’t try to run away again. The time loop spits them back out in Sorgan the next morning, and he gives up trying to understand what the _hell_ is going on. He just throws his hands in the air and sighs and takes it. What else can he do? 

(Incidentally, he can try to stay up all night to stop the reset from happening. He can do that, and he does, but he has the same luck with that as with the rest of it. He’s working through a full polish of his armor, so he doesn’t accidentally fall asleep, when he blacks out anyway. The next thing he knows, he’s waking of his own accord to greet a new day.)

And so they settle into a routine. 

He tells Omera, most days, about the time loop. She always, always believes him, without fail, and then he can see the dawning realization in her eyes as she thinks about the implications. She wilts a little bit, and looks at him, and says firmly, “Don’t tell Winta,” every time. He watches the children with their care-free innocence and he agrees wholeheartedly. Not once, in a single iteration, has he told them about their fate. Sometimes, he finds it’s even too cruel to tell Omera again, and he lets her have the break that he can’t have. 

”How many?” she says today, after he’s finished with his spiel. 

“Hmm?” he says, half in the conversation with her and half with the children. They’re a little ways away playing with bubbles, and he can hear the kid’s laughter ring out, soft and bright. A bubble floats out of his reach and he raises his little hand, clawed fingers outstretched, to pull it back toward him with an invisible force. Din feels a burst of happiness that the kid feels safe enough here to use his powers, and then he laughs outright when the kid pokes the bubble too hard and it splatters a gentle rain of soapy water down on him. The kid giggles at himself too. 

It had been difficult, those first few days, to experience any happiness without an accompanying twinge of sadness about the inevitable separation looming over them. But now he’s learned to take each day as it comes, to appreciate the good moments whenever they visit them. If he’s lucky, he doesn’t lose the kid until late at night and he has the whole day to spend with him. Sometimes he isn’t so lucky, and the kid is ripped away in the morning. He’s a bit more gruff on those days. 

”How many times have we had this conversation?” Omera continues. 

Din finally tears his attention away from the children at that to glance over at her, and he winces internally. He sighs a little. “Twenty-three,” he says quietly, not bothering to mention the iterations that came before Sorgan. Altogether, it’s been nearly a month now. 

“Oh,” she says as she draws back, surprised. She hesitates, then continues in a softer voice. “Are you okay?”

He nods slowly. He hadn’t been, in the beginning, but there’s a word in Mando’a—“ _Shereshoy_ ,” he mutters out loud, without really even meaning to. 

Omera looks at him encouragingly, though, so he continues. “It’s a concept for us,” he begins, referring to those who walk the Way of the Mandalore. “A tenet to live by. It means cherishing every day, and fighting to survive to see the next one. A lust for life.” He inclines his head into a deep nod. “It’s a choice we must make, every dawn and every dusk, and every moment in between. I couldn’t see it before, but that still applies, even in here.” He looks back at the kid to find that he has his mouth open as wide as it will go, baby teeth on full display, as he leans forward to eat a bubble that’s floating toward him. “Especially in here. I can’t lose my way.”

” _Shereshoy_ ,” he hears from beside him, and he whips his gaze back to her. Outsiders don’t often— _care_ , when he talks about his culture. But she listened. She learned. 

“It’s beautiful,” Omera says. 

It is.

It had been the child who reminded him of it. He had been methodically taking apart his amban rifle to give it a little fine-tuning—some cleaning here, a grease-down there—just to quiet the paranoia creeping in the corners of his mind, when the child appears and starts tugging on his gloved hand without a shame in the world. Like he knows Din will drop everything to follow. 

Well. 

He would be right. _But_ Din huffs out a fond sigh before he complies. Appearances, and whatnot. 

Then Din lets the child tug him to his feet, and he follows the child like a shadow, trailing a couple feet behind. 

They exit the hut and turn the corner, only to be greeted by a large huddle of children. 

Din automatically halts where he is, giving them some space. The children from the covert are surrounded by people covered in full armor every day, but he’s aware that it’s not exactly a welcoming aesthetic for strangers of the young variety. They don’t look scared, and they hadn’t been when he first visited all those months ago, but it’s just a habit of his. A courtesy, to compensate for his harsh exterior. 

The child continues forward until he’s standing among them, starting to babble excitedly along the way. He turns around, hesitates for a split second when he sees that Din isn’t behind him, then locates him a little ways away and plows on with his little speech like he never stopped. 

When he finishes, he looks at Din expectantly, head tilted. 

Din stands there for a second. “What,” he says, the word knocked out of him flat, barely even a question.

Din’s not an idiot. He’s learned to intuit some feelings from the child’s mannerisms, and they understand each other as best they can, he thinks. In their own way. 

But even he can’t scramble up a meaning for this. He thinks it was a question, from the head tilt, but that’s all he’s got. 

A little girl from the front of the crowd pipes up. “He wants you to play hide-and-seek with us, Mr. Mando!” 

Under his helm, both eyebrows raise incredulously. “You got all that from—“ He gestures a hand in the kid’s general direction. “ _that_?”

She giggles. “No, it was our idea. He was just excited about it. We _told_ him it might be best if we asked you, but I guess he couldn’t wait.”

Din can see that. He’s a stubborn one, his womp rat. 

”Very well,” he concedes to the children. He can play a round before he gets back to weapons maintenance. He’s up now anyway. 

”You seek first!” that same girl shouts gleefully, and as if they had planned it, they all scatter in different directions before he can even blink. 

Very well indeed. He guesses he’ll seek first.

He counts to an arbitrary number (183) because they hadn’t even stuck around long enough to grace him with the instructions, and then he starts off. 

In the end, he finds all the children—he is a bounty hunter after all—except for Grogu. He looks everywhere a tiny child could reach or fit into, and there are a bunch of places, but he’s well and truly hidden. 

Lost, if you will. 

A Mandalorian does not surrender, and neither does Din. 

He does, however, tip over his king to the child’s well-played match. As a man of honor, it’s only the right thing to do. 

The child pops out from behind some storage boxes, and perhaps, in another life, Din could’ve found him because he certainly left no crate unturned, but the child is in fact on the topmost shelf. Which Din thought a tiny child couldn’t possibly reach, so he counted it out, as any sane person would do. 

Din laughs to himself, for the first time in a long time. “How did you get up—“

He trails off, question answered before he can finish voicing it. The child’s hand is raised, his eyes are squinted, and materials from the shelves float to form a set of stairs leading down to the ground. 

“That’s cheating, kid,” Din says, but it’s said so lightly that it’s hardly an admonishment. It sounds like Din is trying hard not to laugh again, in fact.

And the good moods remain all around for the rest of the day. It’s not until Din is prepping for bed, and suddenly there’s a child to prep as well, that he realizes they’re still together. Somehow, someway, the game of hide-and-seek must have registered as today’s dose of separation. (He tries that method out the next day, but it only worked the once.) Still, it’s a much needed reprieve from the heartache that has been their constant companion these last few days. He tucks the child into his side, and he vows to search for the little moments of joy again, like he used to before this whole mess.

Like the child does every day. 

—

Din is still sitting with Omera when Grogu looks up sharply, hands that were popping bubbles left and right now suspended in mid air. 

Din rushes to his feet, tense. _Here it comes_ , he thinks to himself as he tries to make it to the kid’s side before it’s too late. He’ll damn well put himself between him and the danger at this point, would have from the beginning, but it never has panned out that way. 

The child lets his hands fall back down to his sides in slow motion, then he takes a step forward, away from Din. 

”Wait—“ Din calls out, but he cuts himself off when he sees a lone figure emerge from the woods. They’re wearing an earth-toned robe, hood drawn up over their head, and they’re walking quickly toward the kid. 

Din looks back and forth between child and stranger. Grogu doesn’t seem frightened. He looks almost—intrigued? Still, though, Din steps in front of the child just before the stranger arrives, placing himself between the two of them. 

“Yes?” Din asks gruffly. Until he knows if they’re friend or foe, he doesn’t want to give anything away. 

The stranger tilts their head, appraising him. Grogu gives a little inquisitive coo from where he’s standing behind Din’s leg. The stranger’s face is shrouded in further shadow as the hood dips forward with the movement of them looking down at the child. 

They nod, seeming to come to a decision, then return their gaze to Din and fold the hood down. 

“He’s fond of you,” says the young man, without any greeting. 

Din doesn’t know why he says it, because he’s still not certain he can trust him. But he trusts the kid, and he seems to be fine around the stranger. So he says, “Feeling’s mutual,” quietly before he can stop himself. 

The man’s eyes cut to the child for a moment, and then he says, “Yes, I can see.”

The certainty with which he says it is what clues Din in, simultaneously knocking the breath out of him with the newfound understanding. It’s too reminiscent of the way Ahsoka had been able to communicate with the child to be a coincidence. His heart drops, and he says hollowly, “You’re a Jedi then?” 

The man smiles to himself. “You could say that.”

Din turns his head so that he can glance back at the child. It’s all been leading to this moment. It feels momentous enough that it could really be something that undoes the time loop, cementing itself as a permanent thing in life outside this bubble. Maybe it will end their troubles; maybe it won’t. But Din can’t help but think that whenever they _do_ find a way out, this scenario will play out anyway. This is their fate.

 _So this is how it will feel_ , Din thinks. It feels a little like he’ll never be whole again, in the child’s absence. He didn’t necessarily mean for it to happen, because he knew his task was to deliver the child to his people, not raise him as his own forever. But in the face of losing him, he’s forced to acknowledge that somewhere along the way, maybe he did turn into a parent. He thought he could know the child as his foundling as a temporary thing, to see him off safely when their journey was over. But the love he feels is so much more permanent than that. Even when the child is gone, he’ll still carry that unconditional, exponential love. He’ll still be a parent who worries about his kid’s safety, who hopes for his happiness, who roots for his success. He can’t shut it off. He doesn’t want to. The kid will hold a piece of his heart for the rest of time, and that, Din thinks, is how it should be. 

”You ready, buddy?” Din asks as he stoops to pick the child up for a goodbye. 

The child’s ears droop a little as he stares at Din’s visor. 

“Hey, it’s alright.” His voice wavers, but he trudges on. “He’s going to train you, like we talked about. You’re very special, kid, and it’s considerably outside my realm of expertise.” 

The teasing falls flat when the child doesn’t giggle. 

Din sighs and brushes a gloved hand gently along the child’s cheek, though there aren’t any tears to catch. “This isn’t goodbye, you know. I’ll always be with you.” He says it quietly, a promise just for the child’s ears. 

It feels wrong to plop the kid into someone’s arms without knowing if it’s what he wants, so he carefully places him back on the ground to let him approach the man on his own. 

The child cranes his head back to look up at Din, and Din gives him an encouraging nod. 

So he waddles toward the stranger and comes to a stop directly in front of him. He doesn’t make the grabby hands that Din has become so familiar with, but the man picks him up anyway. 

The man clears his throat awkwardly. “Attachments—“

But Din knows how his kind feel about attachments, and he also knows how the Mandalorians feel. “That’s not what’s happening here,” he cuts him off angrily. 

The man inclines his head toward him respectfully, then continues. “Attachments can be a dangerous thing, but yours is a selfless love. You’re a good man.”

Oh. 

Din returns the nod and takes a step forward to offer his arm. The man shifts the bundle he’s carrying to one side and reaches out so that they can clasp forearms. “Thank you,” Din says sincerely. 

Their handshake falls away and the man turns to head back into the forest. 

“He likes frogs!” Din calls out desperately.

The stranger stops and faces him a little, so Din continues. “Eating them. He likes eating frogs.”

”I’ll be sure to keep an eye on him,” the man replies with a soft smile. 

Din huffs. ”No, he won’t listen. He does what he wants.”

The smile only grows on the man’s face. “He’s safe with me, you know,” he says gently. 

”I—I know that,” Din says indignantly, though his shoulders remain a little tense.

”I will protect him with my life,” the man continues.

And something about that finally sets Din’s heart at ease. It’s familiar, that kind of sacrificial protectiveness. He would do the same, as a Mandalorian and as a father, and he can trust the man a little easier now, with this common thread uniting them.

So he lets them go this time, when the stranger begins walking away. The child pops his head up above the man’s shoulder to look at Din, and Din looks right back at him. 

He watches as they get farther and farther away, and he keeps staring in that direction long after they’ve disappeared for good. 

He hears light footsteps approaching him from behind, and they stop respectfully a short distance away until he nods for them to come closer. Omera appears at his side cautiously, staring off into the forest with him. 

”He’ll be back tomorrow,” she says gently. 

”Maybe,” Din replies. “But I’ll be doing this for real some day.”

“Yeah.” 

There’s a pause as if in hesitation, and then she takes his gloved hand into hers to give it a reassuring squeeze. By the time he’s really even registered that it happened, she’s already let go. 

”Tea?” she says. “I can bring some by your hut.”

He smiles sadly underneath the helmet, overwhelmed with gratitude for her thoughtfulness. “Tea,” he says in agreement. 

—

The next morning, Din does indeed wake of his own accord, though it’s long past “for once.” 

He’s caught in the wake of yesterday’s grief from the moment he’s conscious. This one hits different. He has no intention of ever letting the kid get taken or hurt, or to let him die, once they’re back in the real world. But he will deliver him safely to a _jetii_ who can train him, and the reality of that inevitable separation leaves him reeling. 

He needs a day. He needs just one day to himself before he breaks down completely. 

Din heads straight for Omera’s hut to tell her, briefly, about the time loop. He considers leaving the child asleep in his crib but he can’t risk it. Not today. He scoops him into his arms as he passes by. 

“You don’t have to believe me,” he says tiredly to Omera once he finishes a shortened version of the tale, “but that’s why I’m taking the day off. If you need me, I’ll be in my hut.”

She frowns in concern, but he’s already turning around. 

It turns out to be a very peaceful morning. 

Back in the kitchen, Din cuts a couple slices of bread, and the child is underfoot whenever he tries to move, insisting stubbornly on helping. Din sighs fondly and lifts him onto the counter. Then he presents the child with an unsharpened butter knife to spread some jam onto their toast. 

The child coos, delighted, and gives him a toothy grin before he dips the knife into the jar. He brings it out fast, still excited from the adrenaline of being a big boy helper, no doubt. The jam goes flying off the knife from the movement, landing with a plop on Grogu’s long ear. He jumps a little in surprise before laughing at himself. Din smiles too, but makes no move to clean it off him yet. There’s more where that came from, he’s sure. 

The second attempt is more refined. He manages to bring the knife carefully out of the jar, but the act of spreading it is perhaps too much to expect out of his current motor skills. The knife is held a little too clumsily in his three-fingered grasp, and the jam goes on with about as much grace as someone using their opposite hand, while blindfolded, might could accomplish. 

”Good job, kid,” Din praises, admiring his work. There is in fact more jam on Grogu than on the bread, but it’s about the positive reinforcement. The child offered to help, which was nice, even if the outcome is a little shady. It’s the intention that counts.

When they sit down at the table together to eat the child’s creation, the child is still a sticky mess. Din figures he’ll just get even stickier while they eat, so he’ll clean him up after. Two birds with one stone, or something. 

The toast—it’s not terrible, Din decides as he tilts his helmet up to take small bites. Perhaps a little dry, but he’s had worse. 

So he thanks Grogu anyway.

Grogu does not, however, return the sentiment once Din has wet a cloth and begins to scrub at his hands and face. And ear. He grimaces and grumbles, leans this way and that, then levels a glare at Din when he realizes all of his struggling is pointless.

”Yeah,” Din says. “I know it. Almost done.”

Din scrubs one last spot, then pats the child’s head as he stands to his feet. “There. Still got all your fingers and toes, huh? The ground didn’t open up and swallow you, did it?”

The child huffs, but he can’t keep the serious face for long. He giggles as he shakes his head. 

”I thought so.” 

Din clears the table, taking the dishes to the sink to be washed. 

The child trails after him.

”No,” Din says. “No, I don’t have an extra set of clothes for you if you get wet—“ 

The child continues to follow him.

”...You can dry the dishes. But that’s it!” he tacks onto the end when the child’s ears perk up. “Sit over there,” Din says, pointing to a spot on the counter as far away from the sink as possible. 

The child grins in triumph. He grabs a towel and holds out his hands expectantly once he’s settled in his assigned seat. 

Din holds the dishes over the sink for a good few seconds longer than is really necessary after he finishes scrubbing them, to let most of the water drip off them. He even gives them an inconspicuous shake or two before handing them off. The kid could find a way to soak himself even when he’s got a towel in hand, Din’s found, so he tries to limit his opportunity to do so. 

They make quick work of the tidying up—though Din could have made quicker alone—and then they settle into bed for a nap.

They deserve it.

When Din drifts off, it’s with the child tucked safely into his side. 

—

It must be a couple hours before Din stirs himself awake. 

He doesn’t often get such a solid nap because the child usually takes it upon himself to ensure that Din experiences as many of the hours that the day bestows upon him as possible. A kind gesture, truly. 

But the child remains an unmoving presence at Din’s side, exactly as he was when Din fell asleep. 

”Hey,” Din says as he nudges him gently. “Kid.”

Nothing.

Din leans over, propping himself on his elbow. “You awake?” he asks, looking him over. His eyes are closed, face slack. There’s not even a twitch.

Din sits up quickly. The child should have woken by now since he’s not exactly a light sleeper, and it’s a lot better pretending than what he can normally manage, with all his smiling and peeking through half-raised eyelids. 

His gloved hand shoots out to wrap around the child’s wrist, and he—he doesn’t think he can feel anything—

The glove is ripped off frantically, and he replaces his hand on the child’s pulse point, but it’s—the same, it’s not _there_. He was just—he was fine this morning, he was, so how did this _happen_? 

Oh stars. Din has to curl forward from the pain that crashes into him, and he lets out a groan. He can’t do this again. 

And yet he must, because when he looks back over to the child, he finds that this nightmare is still true. 

He rips his hand back from the child’s wrist and starts rubbing the thumb of that hand along the palm of his other. His breaths are no longer coming in properly. They’re—is it that they’re too fast? He feels like he can’t breathe at all, but some distant part of him recognizes that he must be hyperventilating, that he’s taking in the breaths alright but they’re not doing him a damn bit of good because they’re coming one after the other like he’s been drowning his whole life and has only just now surfaced. But it’s quite the opposite. He’s drowning _now_. This is under water, this is the depths of the sea during a thunderstorm.

He chokes on a sob and tries to inhale properly, but he only sucks in a little air before he’s lost again in the tide. He starts to feel light-headed, and he doesn’t know if that’s from the lack of oxygen or from the twisted knot in his stomach that he thinks might never let up again. 

Will the child come back tomorrow? Probably, but Din won’t ever forget this feeling. It’s an angry sorrow, a rage that mixes with the grief until he can’t sit still anymore. He almost doesn’t want to carry the child this time, because he still can’t get the way his lifeless body felt in his arms the last time out of his head, but it doesn’t matter what he wants. He sure as hell isn’t going to leave him here when he goes out to—he doesn’t know what the plan is. To burn the entire world, perhaps, if that’s what it takes to undo this time loop.

He somehow manages to put one front in front of the other, and he does it again, and then a few hundred more, each one feeling like a mile. 

”Mando?” he hears from the side, and the voice sounds more worried than he’s ever heard it. “Oh, my god. Mando! What happened?” Omera suddenly appears in his line of vision, face wrecked with grief.

Din blinks, and finds that he doesn’t have much effort left for anything else. “I can fix it,” he says, voice completely hollowed out, and then he makes to keep moving forward.

”Woah, woah.” Omera places a hand firmly on his chestplate. “Hang on. You can’t do anything today, right? Or it’ll mess up the possibility of him coming back tomorrow.” She lowers her hand slowly when he seems content to stay there.

But when the fight goes out of him, so does the rest of his strength. His legs give out all at once, and he would have fallen entirely had Omera not reached back out toward him quickly to slow his descent. 

She ends up kneeling to the ground with him, to stop him from collapsing, and she keeps an arm around him like that alone will keep him from snapping apart. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “It’ll be okay, you’ll see. You said he’d be back tomorrow, right?”

Din snaps apart anyway. “I don’t _care_ ,” he says roughly, voice cracking on the last word, and he slams the hand not holding the child into the ground, hard. She realizes he’s got one glove on, one off, and when he lifts his fist back up, it’s bleeding from its contact with the sharp rocks on the ground. He doesn’t notice. “I can’t—“ He drops his head into his one free hand, and his shoulders rise up and down slightly, though no sound escapes from the helmet. The thought goes unfinished.

But Omera thinks she understands, anyway. She would feel the same, if it was her child.

One of the child’s ears flops with the movement of his shoulders, and he flinches violently. He tenses, all over, and he feels the fire of rage licking at the heels of the icy grief that had moments before left him cold and numb. 

”Don’t do anything reckless tomorrow,” Omera says, watching him.

He tilts his head.

“If it can’t be today, I know you’re thinking about tomorrow, and I won’t be able to stop you if I don’t know there’s anything wrong. So promise me, today me, that you won’t do anything reckless to stop the loop.”

Din doesn’t think he can make that promise. If it’s him or the kid, there’s not even a question in his mind who to pick. It’s gotta be the kid. Every time. 

He doesn’t want to sign his own death warrant if he doesn’t have to, though. He can’t imagine leaving the kid alone like that by choice, so maybe he can look for a different way. Surely they can’t be doomed to this life forever. There must be a fail safe that he missed, somewhere.

Din nods slowly. “Promise,” he croaks. And in that moment, he means it.

But he does vow to destroy anyone and anything that gets in his way tomorrow. Pity be to the fool who crosses his path. 

This ends here, one way or the other. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mando’a translations:  
>  _haran_ : hell  
>  _Ka’ra_ : stars (according to mandalorian myth, it’s the ruling council of fallen kings)  
>  _shereshoy_ : lust for life  
>  _jetii_ : Jedi
> 
> finale is up next! :)


	4. i’ll crawl home to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, the mando’a translations can be found in the end notes, and the chapter title is from hozier’s work song (with a bit of altering on the pronouns to make it fit)
> 
> well. here we are. the final showdown! i hope you enjoy

There’s a bird trilling out a bright melody, and a chirp in a higher cadence echoes its call. A fish crests the waters of the pond, and it catches a glimpse of the blue sky that had before been limited to a mere reflection in the water’s mirrored surface. The wind rustles a pile of leaves on the ground, lifting them in a swirl before moving swiftly on. In its absence, the leaves flutter slowly back to the ground. 

Din notices all of these things as he’s walking toward the forest, and he’s surprised to find the peace of a world still turning. It shouldn’t be, if the child’s not here to experience it. He would love to coo along to the birdsong, to try to snatch up the krill that for a moment saw what exists beyond his little pond, to feel the wind whip his already floppy ears to and fro. 

But it’s just Din, and he doesn’t see the world like the child does. He’s always surveilling, but only to assess for threats. The child admires the beauty around him with awe, and he grabs everything in reach to explore and learn further. 

Din observes without becoming, is only in the moment and never of it. The child is curious. Din is cautious.

He passes by a tree and, urged by a desperate need to feel connected to the child, slips his glove off and reaches out to feel its jagged bark. He makes to pull his hand away, but his nail snags against a raised knot and cuts a shallow groove into its surface. He can see it, the mark he left, and perhaps it’s better this way. Now he’s of, not just in. He thinks the child would approve. 

But it’s not quite enough. Din trails the path that he had taken all those weeks ago, once alone, with a heart skipping beats like a record, and once in the child’s shadow, just as stressed from all the child’s fiddling. When he comes upon the tree where he found Grogu on his first trip, he settles himself in front of it. He draws his knees up to his chest—his joints creak, his armor creaks, but he perseveres—and then he leans his back against the tree. 

And suddenly he can see his surroundings from the child’s perspective.

The trees loom, but they’re not threatening. They’re steady. Strong. 

He spots a sun-dew flower that’s grown wilted from its tribulations, but a smaller one props it up on the flat head of its disc floret. 

A little caterpillar inches its way closer and closer to where Din is sitting. It hesitates a few inches away, body aimed in the direction of the tree. Din hums thoughtfully and twists so that he can see behind him. He levels his gaze at the bottom rim of the tree and, sure enough, there’s a tiny crack in the bark that has created a nook for a creature of about the caterpillar’s size. Din scoots over a little without a word, and the caterpillar continues on its way. 

It falters again when it reaches the opening, twisting quickly back the way it came as if to check on something. 

Or someone? 

The hole is really only big enough for one caterpillar, but upon closer inspection, Din can see a second, and then a third, of the insects off to the side in the distance.

So it was a scouting mission then.

Din looks back and forth between the little family. Of, not in, he thinks to himself. He reaches out slowly and snaps off a small piece of bark to make the shelter larger. The caterpillar inches its way inside to scope it out and, satisfied, pops its head out to presumably give a signal to the rest of its kind. 

Din could swear the caterpillar looks back at him before reuniting with the other two, as if in thanks.

Well, Din thinks, no clan should have to be separated.

He knows that from experience. 

Din ends up sitting in that spot for ages. His joints have long since locked up, and he knows it’ll be a journey to try to stand when that time comes, but still he stays. It feels like the kid is with him, here, and he doesn’t want to lose that yet. Doesn’t want to face the long night of tossing and turning, the nightmares that aren’t really _just_ nightmares anymore. They’ve bled out into the light of day. He knows now how it feels to be living them, with no hope of waking. 

As he sits, he watches the first caterpillar come and go, and when it returns, it has food for its _aliit_. The sight brings forth a realization that makes Din snort quietly to himself: he is certain that the child would have tried to eat the caterpillar from the get-go.

Of, indeed. 

Eventually, the sun begins to set, and Din tilts his head back to gaze at the bloom of pastel colors transforming the sky into a vision of beauty. He doesn’t see sunsets a whole lot anymore, what with the Covert being confined to the sewers for survival and him flying around in the Razor Crest to catch bounties whenever he does get to leave. 

He’s mesmerized for a second, still caught in the child’s perspective of awe. The colors of the sunset are sharp, vibrant, and he can see how they fade into one another so seamlessly, like they’re one. As he looks, he takes in what feels like the first full breath he’s gotten since he found the child this morning. 

He only means to stare at it for a moment, but Din sits frozen, just taking it all in, until the sun has long since set and the sky has darkened, leaving only the stars to guide him home.

Yeah. The child—he would like that very much. 

Din will show him one day, when this is all over.

—

The next morning, Din finds himself to be just as mesmerized by the sight of the child’s chest rising and falling evenly in his sleep. He lets him slumber on for a little longer while he starts throwing their belongings together haphazardly. It will take a little while to reach where he wants to go today, and they don’t have much time. He has to succeed by nightfall or it’ll all be for naught when everything resets.

He’s exhausted, sure, and it’s the type of tired that leaves him feeling so drained not even sleep can touch it, but he can’t stop yet. He can collapse once this is all over. For now, he’s got a job to do. 

The only thing he hasn’t tried that feels like it has some potential is going back to the place where it all started. So that’s the plan.

The child is still blinking sleepily when he packs them into the Crest. Before he settles into the pilot’s chair, Din stops at the back seat and buckles the child in securely. 

He’s not taking any chances today. 

Then he powers up the engines and wakes the interior systems. “We have a bit of a journey ahead of us, kid,” he says as he inputs their destination. He checks and double-checks the calculations before plotting a course. “It looks like it will be a few hours in hyperdrive.” Turning his helmet toward the back so he can see the child, he continues, “You remember where we stopped to restock? It had all the sand. And we got you those cookies?”

The child is instantly more awake. He coos, hopeful, and it’s not quite the type of recognition Din was going for. 

“No—I don’t have any right now. Sorry. I meant, that’s where we’re headed.”

The child’s ear flicks in protest.

”That was quite a roller-coaster of emotions just now, I’m sure,” Din says hesitantly. He hears the child huff in agreement, and he thinks it must have been an acceptable response. 

It can’t have been more than a few minutes that they sit in silence, when the child lets out another quiet coo. 

“Bored already, huh?” Din asks fondly over his shoulder. “We don’t have to do the are-we-there-yet thing. Let me assure you: we’re not.” 

He hears a little giggle followed by a more insistent trill, so he spins his chair a few degrees to look at the child. He’s got his sight set on the knob of one of the control sticks. “Oh,” Din says. He honestly doesn’t know how it got back there. It has a mind of its own. But he _does_ know that the child can get it himself, so he must be looking for permission. A rare, though appreciated, thing. “Sure, you can have it. Here.” Din unscrews it for him and tosses it gently toward the back. Once the sphere is close enough, it stops to hover in mid-air and the child reaches out a hand to retrieve it. 

”Patu!” the child says excitedly around a toothy grin.

”You’re welcome, kid.”

He turns back to the front, but the child has already sent the ball his way with an invisible force. Din hears the clang of beskar colliding with itself at the same time he feels something hit the back of his helmet. 

The child’s mouth is open and his eyes are comically wide, when Din glances at him. Din snorts. “I think that one’s on both of us. Call it even?” He has his suspicions that the kid could have stopped it, had he really wanted to, but he won’t hold it against him. 

Din stoops to pick up the metal ball, and he has a serious case of déjà vu. Some things really do work their way into the loop insistently. 

Once he’s retrieved the ball, Din straightens with it held in his grasp. He thinks he knows what’s going on here. He throws the object back toward the kid, and sure enough, it’s caught mid-air, where it hovers for a second, and then it zooms back toward him. Din catches it in a gloved hand and his heart spazzes, seeming to grow three sizes larger with fondness. They’re—playing catch. Together. Like he used to do with his father, when he was younger. 

He tosses the ball to Grogu again, and is perhaps more proud than he should be when it stops to hover directly in front of the child. “ _Jate_ , ad’ika. Very good,” Din says.

The child beams as he sends it Din’s way. 

They don’t play for too long, because Din doesn’t want to tire the little womp rat out and he’s certain the child wouldn’t stop on his own unless he’s actively falling asleep from the strain. But they have a good time. 

The calm before the storm.

—

A cloud of sand billows up from the ground as the Razor Crest lands, but it’s settled by the time the ramp falls open. 

Din leads the way down the slope, with the child trailing along after him. 

“Do you—feel anything?” Din asks hesitantly over his shoulder once they’ve disembarked. “I think they were using something similar to that thing you can do.” 

The child starts to warble out a response in the negative, but before he can finish, Din rethinks his question. He stops walking and turns to face the child, pointing his index finger at him to emphasize his next few words. “Wait. Don’t do anything. It probably would have been the dark stuff if they were. I don’t want you mixed up in that.”

He walks backwards for a few steps, leveling a stern gaze at the child through the helmet, before he faces forward again. 

”We’ll figure something else out.” Din says as he retraces their steps from the other day. 

As Din heads closer to the spot where it all went down, he leaves a line of footprints in the sand. The child hops from one imprint to the next, so focused on his task that he nearly rams into the back of Din’s legs before realizing he’s come to a stop. The child leaves behind a little _scuffle_ , _scuffle_ , _blank_ in each of Din’s much larger footprints, etching the tale of his shuffling skips into their trail. At the last one, there’s an additional _scuffle_ where he backed up quickly to avoid face-planting into armor. 

”This is it,” Din says quietly to the child without turning around. A little louder, he calls out, “If you’re out there, _hut’uuns_ , I just want to talk.” 

Once they’ve had their talk and he knows the way out, he can’t promise that’s all it will be. He’d like to hand out some punches, too, but they don’t need to know that.

The air remains unchanged, though. There’s no pulse of energy like he felt the last time, and he sighs. It was perhaps too much to hope that some of them survived the fight and stuck around here to laugh at him when he inevitably returned. 

But then he hears a menacing chuckle from behind one of the sand dunes. Perhaps he spoke too soon. It can’t be the same people from last time, he doesn’t think, but it’s obvious that this one is up to no good either way. 

It must be the time loop, at it again. 

“I know you’re not calling us cowards. Right, Mando?” The voice is rough, and the speaker makes the last word sound like an insult. 

Din’s heard it all before, the jeers and the taunts. He doesn’t say a word, barely reacts at all on the outside to the disembodied voice, though he tenses internally. How did they get past him? Wouldn’t the child have sensed them, at least? It takes everything in him not to turn to said child and tell him to run, but if they don’t know what the kid means to him, he won’t be the one to tell them. Instead, he lets his hand—already hovering by his holster—wrap around its handle. 

The speaker rises from his vantage point. “That won’t be necessary,” says the Yuuzhan Vong, blue eye sacks pulsing with unrestrained glee. He inclines his head in Din’s direction, so Din turns around slowly, heart hammering in his chest. 

Only to find that another of the creatures has popped up from behind a second sand dune to wrap one of his hands around the child’s mouth, the other holding a knife to his throat. 

Din clenches his teeth so hard it hurts, and he forces himself to remain still, so as not to give anything away. “What of it?” he says, voice shaking with anger, though he hopes it’s imperceptible through his helmet’s modulator. 

The first creature grins, and it looks grotesque on his face. “Oh?” he says. “So then you won’t mind if we...” He trails off as he snaps his fingers at his companion. 

Din counts to exactly one, but his patience is out. He can’t do it. Before the goon holding the kid hostage can even blink, Din has drawn his blaster rifle and fired off a shot directly between his eyes. The humanoid’s hands drop away from the child as he slumps back. 

”I wouldn’t,” Din says harshly to what seems to be the leader. To the child, he softens his voice as he says, “Stay behind me. Run if you have to, okay?”

The Yuuzhan Vong’s crooked smile grows as he watches their interaction. “Now we understand each other. I saw your ship pass by overhead and thought it would be someone special. We camped out here thinking you’d pass through on your way into town. But it seems like you were looking for someone, too. Well,” he says, “I’m sorry you won’t get to find them.” 

The threat rings loud and clear in Din’s ears, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. He shifts his stance and waits to see the leader’s next move. The humanoid is unarmed right now and he personally hasn’t attacked them, so Din can’t in good conscience fire yet. 

He feels a light scrabble at his leg and turns just in time to block an incoming blow with his vambrace. He aims the blaster but suddenly it’s being ripped out of his hands by some sort of whip. He twists around to find the leader catching the rifle and the whip turning back into a staff at his side. Kriff. So he was armed then. So much for honor. 

Din faces back to his opponent as he engages the flamethrower and watches in satisfaction as they’re forced to step away, dancing wildly as they try to put out the fire eating away at them.

Din feels a blaster shot ping against his armor and sighs as he turns back to the leader. “I think you have something of mine,” Din says. 

”I certainly don’t want it,” the leader fires back. “It is not the type of weapon I would prefer to yield. But there is some justice in the fact that you will die at the mercy of the horrible technology you humans insist on creating. Droids, comm systems, blaster rifles—blasphemous. I can bear its weight to see your doom.” He pulls the trigger again, as if to prove his point. 

The shot sails harmlessly into Din’s chestplate. When Din blinks, though, he sees the flash of carnage from the eyes of a boy far too young to witness it: A mother, cradling her son’s head away from the debris. A father, clinging desperately to the child in his arms as he flees the danger. A B2-series droid, weapon raised in hostility. An armored man, hand outstretched in promise. “I don’t like the droids either,” Din says defensively, before he can stop himself. Then he thinks of IG-11 and how sometimes even innate programming can change for the better, and he thinks his hatred might not be entirely true anymore.

”And yet you walk around in full beskar, pilot a decked-out starship. No, you’re no better than the rest.” The leader fires off another few shots, and the sound of them colliding with Din’s armor punctuates the last of his speech. It’s clear the humanoid has no practice aiming such a foreign weapon, but that makes him even more dangerous. What if a stray shot hits the kid?

Din holds up his hands. “That’s fair,” he says. “But leave the child out of it. He’s no part of this feud.”

The leader frowns sympathetically, though it’s too dramatic to come off as sincere. “Oh, but he is. I know what he can do. Yet I’m certain he wouldn’t be able to sense us through the Force.” 

Din’s hands that are held out in surrender wilt a fraction with the knowledge that this is about both of them. He can’t talk the kid’s way out of this one. For a moment, it all seems hopeless. How many times must they live through this? 

But then his resolve hardens. As many times as it takes. They will live through this as many times as it takes, until Din can get them out. He’s not giving up.

He draws his spear and then he takes a risk. He’s sure the leader will be skilled with his own such weapon if that’s what he prefers, but Din is too. If he can beat him in fair combat, the rest of his troop might leave them alone. “Let’s try it your way,” Din says to the leader. “Put the blaster down and we’ll fight just with the spears.”

The leader looks pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. He throws the blaster down without any regard for its welfare, and he draws his amphistaff. “A marvelous idea. Perhaps there is a brain rattling around inside that bucket of yours.” 

Din remains silent as he waits for the leader to approach first.

And they’re off. Din blocks the Yuuzhan Vong’s first strike easily, then he digs his heels into the ground so he’s not moved by the impact of the spears colliding. He’s well-aware of the child behind him that he must protect at all costs. 

When Din lunges forward with his own attack, his spear connects with the middle of the amphistaff. The tip of the humanoid’s spear hisses and arcs straight for Din’s hand, serpent fangs bared. Its teeth bounce off the beskar plate on the back of Din’s glove, and Din rips his hand back, surprised but unharmed. 

Stay away from that, then. Noted. 

He jabs the pointed edge of his spear forward, aimed at the humanoid’s chest, but he parries it with the amphistaff. Neither weapon relents. The amphistaff takes the blow without a scratch, much to Din’s frustration. 

On the next strike, however, the serpent’s head at the tip of the amphistaff clangs against the beskar spear, and the whole thing shudders from the impact. 

Huh. Weak spot: identified. Target: acquired. Lunge: in progress. 

In the next second, Din brings his spear down onto the creature’s head, _hard_. The staff falters and shrinks, like it wants to curl in on itself. The humanoid curses and doubles his efforts, slinging the now whip-like amphistaff straight for Din’s neck. 

Din takes a couple steps to the side to dodge, and he raises his spear at the same time. He meets the serpent in the middle, stabbing it straight through the chin with the pointed edge of his spear. 

It screeches in harmony with its master’s angry cry. The humanoid growls as he pursues Din, and he swings the fanged tip at Din’s upper arm. The staff flops uselessly now, but the fangs are still no doubt sharp, so Din backs away another step to dodge the attack. Simultaneously, he knocks his spear into the dead amphistaff to change its momentum. It soars backwards and the fangs impale themselves into the humanoid’s unarmored hand. 

While he’s distracted, Din runs him through the chest with the spear, then twists it for good measure before he pulls it back out. 

The humanoid drops to a knee and stutters out his final words, strained, “You may have won the battle, but you will not win the war.” He snaps his fingers as he tilts forward, and Din hears a blaster rifle cock in preparation of being fired. 

The world freezes, and Din’s heart seizes right along with it. He turns as if in slow-motion to find that he’s made two mistakes. Two fatal mistakes. 

One: a henchman has gathered up the blaster rifle that Din so carelessly left where it had been thrown. 

And two: he’s no longer in between the child and the danger. He had stepped a few feet away during the fight. Stupid. _Stupid_. 

They’re deadly mistakes, alright, but not for him. The only one he’s put at risk is the kid. How could he not have seen this coming? He’s gotta _do_ something—

Time rights itself, and Din makes the only decision he can in that moment. Everything becomes clear to him, all at once. It’s not being reckless. It’s not. He made a promise and he plans on keeping it. What he does next isn’t reckless because he _does_ think it through, has thought it through every day for the past month—hell, for the past year with the kid in his care—and it’s what you do. He did his best to protect him, but when his best isn’t good enough, there’s one more thing he’s got and he’ll give it gladly. 

He’s too far from the Yuuzhan Vong to stop it from happening entirely, but he can reach Grogu in time. So as the shot is fired, he slides in front of the kid, on his side with arms outstretched. 

There is no ping.

There is only a scream from the kid like Din has never heard before, and for a second, he genuinely cannot breathe because he thinks he failed and kriff, that’s the third fatal mistake, the third time he’s let this happen. 

But then he feels the air pressure go all out of whack, and he’s sure he’s only fine because of the helmet filtering the air for him. He hears a loud thump as the remaining enemy bodies fall to the floor, crushed from the child’s efforts of manipulating the Force. 

When the world returns to normal, Din finds that he’s lying flat on his back, and that he still can’t quite draw in a full breath. 

As the shock wears off, he slowly becomes more and more aware of the fact that his neck is one-part numb and three-parts burning. And then he remembers the distinct lack of a ping from bullet hitting beskar. 

The dots are easy to connect from there, even if his head is starting to spin: the shot hit him instead. 

He’s—he’s _literally_ covered in 90% armor, and this is what happens? 

He would do it again, though. He would, a hundred times over, if it meant the kid was okay at the end of it. Even if each breath is coming in harder and harder. Even if he’s losing blood at an alarming rate. 

He just hopes the cowl around his neck can hide the worst of the wound from the kid. 

Din wishes the child didn’t have to witness this at all, actually, but it’s done now. There’s no undoing it. Din flails out a hand, searching for the child beside him. When a tiny hand is placed into his larger gloved one, Din squeezes it reassuringly.

If this is it, he wants to see Grogu face-to-face, one last time. The world is always filtered through the lens of his visor, and in that moment, he wants it pure. Without any barriers. A comfort, for both of them.

He trusts that the kid got rid of everyone near them, so he depressurizes the helmet and slips it off. His vision whites out a couple times when he moves his neck too fast, but he wants— _needs_ —to reassure the kid, and to say goodbye himself. 

Once it’s off, the child clambers onto his chestplate, and he’s humming to himself. His hands shake as he lifts them toward Din’s neck. 

”Hey, hey.” Din keeps eye contact with the child as he pushes his hand down gently. “You can’t—f-fix this one, buddy. But it’ll be okay.” 

The child’s humming intensifies, growing louder and more desperate, and Din’s heart breaks. 

”I promise,” he whispers brokenly. He sucks in a breath that’s more rattle than anything else, but he manages to choke out, “I’ll come back to you.” It’s a horrible promise to make, to calm the kid down, and Din hopes with everything in him he can keep it. He’s not sure of anything anymore, and if he is what’s keeping them in the loop, he has no idea what will happen without him, but he hopes regardless. 

The child stops humming, trading it instead for a little wail that sounds like it comes from the very depths of his soul.

”Alright,” Din says softly, and his words start to slur despite his best efforts. “C’mere.” He guides Grogu down so that he’s laying on the chestplate, and Din brings a hand up clumsily to rub his back. 

It’s all he can do. For a minute, it seems like it might be enough. The child’s breaths even out so that they aren’t such frantic heaves, and his body stops trembling from the trauma. Din drinks in the sight of him without the helmet between them, and it’s like they could be back on the Crest, safe and sound in their shared sleeping chamber, on those nights when Grogu has a nightmare and Din removes his armor—literally and figuratively—to comfort him.

But then Din chokes on his next inhale, and he’s so freaked out by it that his hand stalls its circular motions on the child’s back. 

“Bah?” The child lifts his head, eyes wide. 

Din shakes his head as much as he can and tries to continue on with the reassurances, but he knows now that there’s really no coming back from this one. He’s dying, and it hits him in that moment how _kriffing_ selfish it was to remove the helmet. So he’s going to make the kid watch him die, huh? Is that it? If he didn’t bumble his way through strike three earlier, here it is now, and what a sin it is. 

Din is drowning, but he surfaces just enough to mumble, ”Can you—close your eyes?” His breath hitches again, and when he musters up the will to continue, there’s a desperate note to his voice. “P-please, kid.”

Grogu can see what he’s doing here. _Buir_ doesn’t want him to have to watch when—when it happens. But Grogu is stubborn too, and Grogu doesn’t want him to have to be alone. He hesitates, because he could hear how desperate the plea was, but he can’t leave him.

“Close—“ _buir_ starts, but the sound cuts off with an awful, choked rasp, and he doesn’t continue. _Can’t_ continue.

And suddenly, Grogu is terrified. He shuts his eyes closed real tight. It isn’t fair to do it, he knows it isn’t, but he’s scared. He doesn’t want to watch, he doesn’t want this at all. He fumbles blindly for a gloved index finger, frantic, and he gives it a squeeze with his tiny clawed grasp. He counts one of his own heartbeats, then a second and another four, before he feels the hand held in his go limp. He wants to scream like he did earlier, but suddenly all he can do is rock back and forth and hum to himself quietly as he brings _buir’s_ hand up to his chest. Grogu makes sure to keep his eyes firmly closed so he doesn’t have to see the life leave his body, or the—the aftermath of it, either. He can pretend, this way, he’s only sleeping. 

There’s one thing he simply must do, though, and it’ll require him to be very, very brave. He finally gathers the courage to squint one eye open, and he’s met with the sight of _buir’s_ eyes staring back at him, unseeing. He really does sob at that, and the shaking starts back up with a fervor, but he has to do this. He lifts one hand slowly and guides _buir’s_ head up from the floor using the Force. He slips the helmet on and then lowers his head gently back down to the ground, so that he might rest in peace. Grogu knows how much it means to him, even if he doesn’t quite understand it all himself. If it’s important to _buir_ , it’s important to Grogu. 

Then Grogu curls back up on his chestplate to watch over him. 

He stays there for a while before it occurs to him that he should perhaps call for help from the starship. 

He dismisses the thought immediately. He’ll wait right here, until his _buir_ wakes up.

He’s only sleeping, after all. 

—

The world around Din is as muddled as it had been moments before. He blinks, and suddenly he can see that it’s actually due to a foggy mist shrouding the area, not his blurry vision growing steadily worse as the bloodstain beneath him pools ever more thick. 

Din shifts carefully, but there’s no strain. When he snakes his hand underneath the cowl around his neck, the glove comes back clean. He scrambles to his feet quickly. 

And it becomes abundantly clear that he’s no longer in the same place. Far from it. He’s traded sand underfoot for a marshy swampland. The scuttle of the rock-beetle and the squeak of the clawmouse are no longer; instead, he hears the fluttering of a bogwing flying overhead and the ripple of water as a dragonsnake glides across its surface.

There’s no child huddled on his chestplate, but—his hand drifts to his holster—there is a gathering of blue-hued forms around him. 

“What have you done with the child?” Din asks them, an edge to his voice. 

One of the Force ghosts, an older man, raises a hand as he might would do to placate a frightened animal. ”He’s safe, as are you,” he assures gently. 

Din shakes his head. Not good enough. “What have you done with him?” he repeats pointedly. 

”Ah, it’s not what _we_ have done, but what _you_ have done that is important here,” says the man. 

Din sighs and leans forward as his free left hand goes to perch on his hip in frustration. “Fine. What have I done?” he asks in the manner of one who is merely humoring another, tone devoid of all inflection. 

“You’ve proven yourself a worthy protector to our young Padawan.”

Din draws back a little, surprised. “I didn’t realize there was a test.”

The man nods slowly. “The time loop—“

”Are you serious?” Din cuts him off, louder than he usually allows himself to be in his anger. “ _Haar’chak_ , do you have any idea what we’ve been through? What the kid—“ his voice cracks, “—has been through?”

”I do have an inkling, yes.”

Din fumes, helmet tilted threateningly.

” _But_ ,” the man continues firmly, sensing the Mandalorian’s distress, “we couldn’t actually control a lot of it. There were scenarios we hoped would play out, but we had no say in the final outcome, or the order in which they occurred. We are the choices we make, and that’s true in all iterations of time.”

”So you’re saying it’s _my_ fault?” Din’s voice is now dangerously quiet. 

”No, it’s no one’s fault. It’s just a fact.”

Din opens his mouth furiously. A fact, huh? So it’s just a _fact_ that the child was taken, hurt, _killed_ in the pursuit of whatever vision they had here? 

He doesn’t get to say it, though, because he’s interrupted by a solid human figure stepping forward from the back of the crowd, hood of his cloak drawn. “This is going well,” he says brightly. He flips the cloak back and looks at Din. “Can we start over?”

Din takes a step back. He recognizes him. “You’re the Jedi that took the kid for training that day. How—”

”I am,” he says simply. “We needed to test your love for the child. How much you love him. And in what way.”

Din remembers how the man had recited _Attachments can be a dangerous thing_ like it was his mantra, and he thinks he’s starting to understand. “That first day I came to Sorgan to leave him behind...?”

The young man nods. “You tried to do what was best for the child. A selfless display of love.”

Din blows out a breath. Maybe it was, but— “I’ll never forget his face,” he says quietly. Before he had closed his own eyes like a coward, he had seen the feelings of betrayal in the kid’s pained gaze, the confusion about why he was about to be left behind _again_ in his furrowed brow, the longing for Din to stay in the outstretched hand. 

The man shakes his head dismissively. ”He’s not ready yet. But we had to make sure you would be, when the time comes.”

Ready might not be the word Din would use. No one is really ever ready for the empty nest. But he is willing to let go, if it means the kid is free to fly, so he sees the point they’re trying to make. 

”Was it something about the choices I made that kept us on Sorgan too, then?” he asks, genuinely curious. He’s not sure if he could have survived those couple days when the kid died without Omera, and he wonders how he came to be so lucky. 

”Well.” The man looks sheepish. “Not exactly. We wanted to see why you trusted them enough to leave Grogu there. If it was—warranted.”

The anger simmers back. “Leave them out of this,” Din seethes, and there’s no room for argument. He’s not asking. 

“Of course.”

But Din isn’t done. “They won’t remember?”

”No. It will be like it never happened for them.”

Din nods to himself. That’s good at least. 

Oh, stars, but the kid. What about the kid? He went through so much, and today, to have to be there when Din died. It’s too much. Will he—?

”Grogu won’t remember either,” the man says gently. 

Din narrows his eyes a little at the intrusion of his thoughts, but he’s relieved about the confirmation nonetheless. It does make him wonder though...

”You couldn’t have just asked me what I would do for the kid?” Din says.

”We needed the truth.”

”I would have given it to you!” _Haat_ , _ijaa_ , _haa’it_. It is The Way, not to mention the decent thing to do as a human being. Din is many things, but he’s not a liar. He keeps his word.

”We see that now, but only because you showed us. Actions speak louder than words, you know. We had to see it. That you would follow through with it, in the moment. Those two most selfless acts: letting someone go so they can thrive, and sacrificing yourself so that they can live on.”

The fight goes out of Din as he realizes he had the power to stop it all along. They were waiting on him, this whole time. He says brokenly, “You didn’t have to hurt him. I would have done that from the beginning.”

And finally, the man’s face scrunches up in remorse. “I’m sorry,” he says sadly. “We really didn’t have much control.”

There’s that royal _we_ again. Who—? But suddenly, Din remembers the day it all went down, and he feels sick. He fought the Jedi as if they were enemies, because at the time he thought they were. He would have done so again today, had he found them, and his mouth goes dry. “Your people,” Din croaks. “I—killed them. Why did they come at me like that?”

The man smiles sadly. “It had to look believable. They knew the risk they were taking, and they deemed it worthy. For the child.” 

He motions to his left, and Din notices for the first time a couple of the humanoids from the other day, shimmering a translucent blue. He didn’t mean to do that to them, he didn’t _know_ —

One of them speaks up. “It’s alright. We don’t regret it. We are honored we could ensure the child’s safety.”

A second member of the group nods. “And some of us live still. We’re great Healers.”

That doesn’t excuse it. “I’m sorry, regardless,” Din directs at them, helmet stopping on each of their gazes for a moment. 

They incline their head at him in turn. 

Din turns back to the solid figure. “How do I get back?” He hesitates. “Am I—allowed to go back? I made the kid a promise.”

”Don’t worry, we’ll bring you back to him. And I will return when the time is right. In the meantime, Grogu is in good hands. We trust in that, now.”

It is the cloaked figure who offers up his arm first this time. Din walks forward to clasp the man’s forearm in a firm handshake. The second they make contact, the scene around them starts to fade. The two of them are the last ones present, and then even they melt away. 

—

When Din wakes early the next morning, after getting less than two hours of sleep it feels like to him, it’s to the clattering of a child making mischief. 

Which means. The rising was decidedly not of his own accord. 

He also feels the gentle, familiar hum of an over-worked engine that equates to safe, to _home_ , and Din dares to hope. 

Could it be? 

He trips his way out of the sleeping chamber and freezes at the threshold of the cargo bay. 

It could. It _is_. The child is fine, scribbling away on a piece of durasheet so determinedly that he doesn’t even look up when Din walks in. He sees the cabinet door still ajar, and the overturned cup with markers spilling out into the floor. That explains the ruckus that woke him then. 

Din can hear the low murmur of the radio in the background. The kid must have turned it on for him, and no, that thought absolutely does not make his chest all fluttery with warmth. He listens for just long enough to catch the confirmation of _Sunday_ , and he clings to it like it’s a life-preserver. 

”Hey, kid,” he says, voice light. He feels light, too, overcome as he is with relief that it’s finally over. “What are you up to? You’re up early, huh?”

The child’s attention remains rooted to his drawing, but he chirps out an obligatory one-syllable response to humor Din.

”You don’t say? That’s nice. I’ll make us some breakfast then.”

Din maneuvers the tiny kitchen space expertly, like he never left it at all. He remembers to jiggle the handle of the drawer in the far corner before opening it to loosen the lock that has long since been jammed. It used to be a storage unit that he kept secure since it housed his more important belongings. Meager savings for a beskar pauldron, his adoptive _buir’s_ Mythosaur pendant, the puck from the first bounty mission he received. Now it holds utensils because it’s no longer needed for these trinkets. He’s got a full suit of armor. He’s taken to wearing his _buir’s_ pendant around his neck since he gave his own to the kid. And he smashed the puck that same day he was reunited with Grogu after giving him up to The Client in the first place. It used to serve as a reminder, a warning even, of what he could become, but the child gives him purpose now. He doesn’t need it anymore. 

Din dodges the sharp corner of the counter on his way to the microwave. He probably has a permanent bruise on his hip from learning that lesson. He punches the microwave closed, because it’s a bit finnicky in its old age, and he stops to manually spin the plate inside every thirty seconds. 

Once he’s heated and cut the nuna jerky, he gathers two plates and begins portioning out the food, only to be interrupted by the child trilling out a complaint. 

Din looks up to find that he is still bent over his art, and he smiles fondly. “That’ll keep. You can stop to eat something.” 

The child grunts, and it sounds like a response in the negative. 

”You’re not hungry?” Din asks. 

There’s a moment of hesitation, and then the child shakes his head without looking up. 

Din sighs. “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.” 

He brings one plate over and depressurizes the helmet before slipping it off and placing it in between the two of them. He doesn’t always eat with it off, but he feels like it’s an apology for yesterday’s mistake. He knows the kid doesn’t remember, but he still wants to replace the image of his lifeless eyes with something else. 

Din takes a few bites of his half of the ration pack, staring off into space. When his eyes had wandered over to the child’s drawing for the first time, the child had cooed indignantly and rushed to shield it from his prying, so he doesn’t try again. Din is just taking another bite when he hears what sounds suspiciously like a child’s stomach rumbling. 

Din raises his eyebrows. “Not hungry, huh? You want to try again?” 

The child huffs and babbles the bare minimum, maybe two syllables this time, as his hand continues to work at the doodle. 

”Mhm. I know you’re busy. It’ll just take a minute. I’ll be right back, okay?” 

Din pushes to his feet to retrieve the second plate of food. He hears the child grumble to himself as he heads into the kitchen, but he keeps going anyway. 

”Here we are,” Din says as he turns back to the child with plate in hand. 

The child is glaring at his durasheet, but it does look like he’s stopped the task at hand just long enough to pull Din’s helmet closer to him. It’s turned with the T-visor facing the child, and when the child senses that he has Din’s attention, he spins it around pointedly. 

It takes a second for the image to register in his mind, but then Din lets out a laugh. He can’t help it. The helmet is sporting a look to rival that of the kid’s current facial expression. Just above the top of the horizontal sight line, the child has drawn on eyebrows slanted down in anger. 

The child’s mouth twitches up at the sound of Din’s laughter. 

“Yeah, yeah. You’re real funny, kid. That better be a washable marker,” Din says, though there’s no real bite to his tone. It’s mostly fond. 

A full grin spreads across the child’s face at that. 

”Is it?” Din asks, and his voice grows shrill at the end of it. 

The child lets him sweat it out for a few seconds, but then he relents with a nod, still smiling toothily. 

”Hah, okay. You got me.” Din resumes his path back to the child and places the jerky beside him. “I’d sleep with one eye open tonight if I were you. Now eat up. It’s still warm.”

The child holds up one finger, and Din gets the impression that it’s a similar sentiment to the “one more minute, _please_ “ ordeal he’s seen many a parent fall prey to. 

Din chooses to say nothing, and it makes him feel better. Like if he doesn’t acknowledge it, it means he’s not one of them, wrapped around the kid’s finger. 

True to his word, it’s less than a minute later that Grogu finally tears his eyes away from the drawing. He glances up at Din, and he looks almost shy. Then he presents the durasheet with a flourish. 

“Is this for me?” Din asks. 

The durasheet flops in the air, and Din takes it as confirmation. 

He reaches out for it and gets a good look at it for the first time. 

Meanwhile, the child tugs his plate of food toward him and takes a huge bite while he waits for Din’s reaction.

”Oh,” Din says, the word knocked out of him before he can stop it. It’s a picture of the two of them, that much is clear even through the clumsy hand of a child. The green blob with comically long ears has a speech bubble above it filled with exclamation marks, and the taller figure is colored in with gray to designate his armor. Inside the middle of the gray chest, Grogu has drawn a red heart, and the armored face is smiling as it watches the child babble excitedly on.

”Thank you, buddy,” Din says softly. “This is—really great.” His voice cracks, and the last two words are said at a higher pitch than the rest of it. He clears his throat. “Can I hang it up?”

Grogu gleams with pride. With his mouth full, his cheeks puff out when he smiles. He nods quickly.

Din damn near hangs it on the outside of the Razor Crest for all to see, but he’s forced to acknowledge that it wouldn’t hold up out there. In the end, he places it carefully on the inside door of the sleeping chamber, so that it might bring them comfort when they’re jolted awake from a nightmare. When they most need a reminder that they’re not alone. 

It really only matters that they know it’s there, anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the mando’a translations for you:  
>  _aliit_ \- family  
>  _jate_ \- good  
>  _hut’uun_ \- coward (worst possible insult)  
>  _buir_ \- father  
>  _haar’chak_ \- damn it  
>  _haat_ , _ijaa_ , _haa’it_ \- truth, honor, vision (words to seal a pact)
> 
> thanks for reading! i appreciate all of you an immense lot. <3


End file.
